Legacy of Iokath: The Triple World
by Mechalich
Summary: SWTOR, post-KOTET. The Alliance has claimed the Eternal Throne, but Iokath, which produced this masterful technology, remains a mystery. Now two smugglers must work together to chase down the lost legacy of ancient weapons tests and the civilizations they scourged. Yet even in death the builders of Iokath have the power to make the galaxy tremble.
1. Chapter 1

**Chapter One**

The principle cantina at Alliance Headquarters, the one with the short walk outside to a combination of great views and long drops, was truly a place that never slept. Operations, after all, continued at all hours, with scientists, soldiers, smugglers, and even Sith coming and going with no regard for the local day and night cycle. The arrival of dawn didn't stop the influx of personnel and therefore the bar couldn't possibly be allowed to shut down. Bartenders worked in shifts, aided by robust and nearly tireless droids that slowly acquired a dense patina of ale stains and whiskey splashes as their week-long shifts stretched to the end.

Most of the clientele, seeking a respite for bleary-eyes between the seemingly unending assignments that ground upon the Alliance's heavily burdened personnel, rarely noticed.

Kanner sat at one of the round tables near the long bar, a position he'd gradually learned was among the quieter points in the cantina. Soldiers, whether their uniforms marked them as Alliance, Empire, or Republic in origin, tended to cluster towards the walls out of some bizarre imperative towards security. Louder private parties, like Paxton Rall's rambunctious pirate crew or the endlessly chattering band of Jawas that haunted the base during dark hours, tended to claim one of the side rooms. That left up front as the best place to nurse a cold Corellian Ale undisturbed.

Steadily mulling through a low alcohol buzz with the old classics on the jukebox – all attempts to please the Alliance's astonishingly diverse range of potential drinkers resulted in extremely anodyne background tracks – suited his mood of late. He'd done his time as partying in raucous bunches with glass held high, every ship captain did, but a glance across the little round table to the other empty stools served only to summon ghosts. He blinked those away quickly and gulped down a throat-filling portion in the hopes of forestalling any reappearances.

Victory, he supposed, was something you had to take slowly. Otherwise it just might drag you down.

Hours passed by. Kanner went through one ale, then another, and was carefully working his way through the third as afternoon bent towards evening. He wasn't drunk, just vaguely morose. At the first hint of sunset, as cool orange rays bent around the doors to carry the twinge of the outdoors into this shielded space, he considered taking a walk. Memory swiftly dissuaded that impulse. The once grand forests near Headquarters were now charred and slashed ruins, blasted apart by artillery fire and torn to shreds by World Thrashers. Ghosts too, were far more pervasive in the wilds than here beneath the duracrete walls.

These empty hours presented a conundrum to him, sitting and watching the walls. He wasn't used to spare time planetside, not anymore. For two years he'd been scrambling from one desperate supply run to the next, dashing about the galaxy seeking any possible resource to feed the flickering fire of the Alliance as it stared down the obliterating might of Zakuul. Through the long years before that he'd done much the same just trying to stay ahead of the Eternal Empire's customs officers. Most days he'd been lucky to find time to collapse into his bunk aboard ship before the next job came through.

Things were different now. The supply division cobbled together from the galaxy's braver, or possibly just most hateful and reckless, dregs now served alongside the Eternal Fleet. A military force so mighty it could spare most of its resources for supply runs and at the same time staffed by droids who didn't mind the duty; compared to that, the cargo he could contribute was less than marginal. Oh, he was sure that one of the managers would find something for him to do soon enough, but it wouldn't be important, not in the way it used to be when every blaster, every grenade, mattered.

As he contemplated whether it would be acceptable to order a fourth ale, a nagging part of his mind began to consider whether it might be time to consider a return to civilian pursuits. Some of the old contacts were still alive, he knew, and it looked like a good time to get back into the field. Freed from the Eternal Empire's quotas the Republic was sure to build up their military again. There was money to be made, and it would be better to get in early.

Ghosts flickered at the edges of his vision, red-shifted and skittering away from focus. A clear message that he wasn't ready. He wasn't done with the Alliance, not yet. He could only hope it wasn't done with him.

Sunk deep into recalled reflection, Kanner barely noticed when a slender frame descended to occupy the seat across from him. He looked up in time to catch a second new arrival settle in with a delicate ruffle. This one caused him to stop and stare.

The first face was familiar, an instantly recognized combination of yellow-green skin, triangular tattoos, and light worry lines beneath bright eyes full of wisdom touched by mischievousness. A famous visage, the features of a revered figure from the Fringe for decades, and now one of the principle leaders of the Alliance. There was no chance for any self-respecting spacer to mistake Hylo Visz.

While the personal attention of the Alliance's top logistics manager was unexpected, it wasn't unheard of, and Kanner could slot that into the course of his day well enough. Rather, the woman who took the seat next to the Mirialian smuggler was the source of his confusion and a swift downward retreat towards his glass.

She was human, and a spacer who knew her business surely. The latter was obvious from the thick-pocketed belt and dual-bandoleer mounted back canisters she bore, one of which seemed to hold a magnetic grapple. Yet she defied all other expectations for the breed. Most women who took up shipboard life wore simple flightsuits or loose jackets and carried themselves with a wearied griminess to match any of the men aboard. Not so this one. Her gloves were refined dark leather, not nerf hide but some exotic beast, and she wore a fabulous blue skirt of shimmering cerulean that elegantly concealed all but the glossy black tips of her boots. Perfect blonde hair rose in an elaborate wrapped coiffure pulled tight behind her skull before descending in a refined braid down the back, Her face was a precision-engineered oval; model-smooth skin, and bright lipstick rested beneath brilliant blue eyes that to Kanner's eyes seemed to encompass the totality of the world.

More than beautiful, though she was surely that, this woman might have been the most glamorous person he'd ever shared a table with.

As he shifted his eyes downward to avoid blatant ogling he wondered who she might possibly be, and why in space Hylo Visz had brought her to see him.

"Kanner Elysar," it was the legend who broke the silence, voice filled with a refined subtle mixture of amusement and confidence as ever it was. "Drinking away the evening and fighting off boredom. I thought I'd never see the day you took a whole shift between assignments." She smiled beneath pale eyes. "For a while there we thought you were trying to set some kind of record. Nico even had you in the pool."

"Huh," that was a new bit of trivia. "Surprised he'd make such a bad bet. Silas crushed everyone after Darvannis. The Mandos are insatiable." The Rattataki woman was also ruthless in a way Kanner could never match. It was hard to make money off a war when you committed fully to one side, and somehow he'd committed more to the Alliance than he ever would have to the Republic. Looking down into the nearly empty glass, he wished he could have said why.

"Nico Okarr's lost more bets than any ten other smugglers," Hylo smiled, amusement reaching just to the edge of her eyes. "But he's also won more than any twenty. He always seems to come out ahead in the end. Question is, though," She leaned forward, black gloves tapping on the table as fingers impishly walked their way to the center. "Are you enjoying your free time?"

Maybe it was the ales, or the hours, but something kicked its way up Kanner's jaw then, and knocked loose the truth. "No." He replied bluntly. "You've got the Eternal Fleet now, you don't need me or my buddies, those of us who are left." Their seats might be occupied now, but the ghosts hadn't left the table by any means. "So if you've got work," there was no other reason for Hylo to bother with him, and given her importance it had to be something dangerous and secretive to bring her out in person. "I'm ready to launch any time."

"You shouldn't agree so easily," this time the smile passed all the way through her face. "It takes the fun out of it." Her glove flipped over to reveal a thin datacard. "I do have a job for you, but it's not a solo op."

Gaze shifted to the glimmering presence next to Hylo, Kanner desperately wished he was wearing his filtration mask. As it was, he suspected this woman could see exactly how she affected him written clear across his face. "I don't think you two have met," Hylo continued. "Allow me to introduce Arleyk Smaugan, she's been working on the targeting end of our business. In fact, some of the caches you ran down were located as part of her efforts."

Arleyk extended one gloved hand with all the delicate imperiousness of an Alderaanian noble, fingers extended and thumb below. "A pleasure." She sounded like a courtier too.

Kanner blinked, wondering if he was supposed to kiss the glove. Too off-balance to try to play such games, he settled for briefly grasping the dark gloves in his charcoal grays and offering an awkward shake. Something played across the crystalline blue eyes in response, but he could not have guessed what it might indicate. "Likewise."

The exchange appeared to amuse Hylo to no end. "Believe it or not," she chuckled. "You two joined up with the Alliance for the same reason."

"What business were you in?" Kanner followed the thread easily enough, curiosity leading him to speak first.

Unperturbed, the answer dripped from crimson lips with liquid grace. "Miscellaneous luxuries. I engaged to supply the high-end auction market with historical curiosities, legacy technologies, and anything else the galaxy's elite might fancy. As you may recognize, the Eternal Empire all but eliminated that market."

Arcann's tribute demands had hit the rich hard, that much was true. Kanner didn't exactly sympathize, but he supposed if you'd built your whole persona around appealing to them it would be a crushing blow. The admission allowed him to gain the first sliver of appreciation for how carefully crafted the perfectly composed mask Arleyk bore must be. "You couldn't sell to Zakuul instead?" he wondered aloud as he sought to place this incomplete piece.

The blond woman turned her head and scoffed with an expression of imperious disdain that would have done any Senator proud. "Zakuul? Their entire society was built by droids, mass-produced, identical, and instant. They wouldn't be able to appreciate an artisanal antique if you broke it over their face." Something dark in her eyes suggested this statement was true in a very literal sense. "And you?" She poured the forceful focus of her attention across the small space at him.

"I was in specialty procurement, for the Republic." The words tumbled out of Kanner. Some part of him knew it to be manipulation, the hormone-triggered desire to impress this woman, but awareness was not the same thing as resistance. "Blaster mods, enhanced macrobinoculars, prototype armor linings, that sort of thing. The real stuff too, not just relabeled junk," he amended in preemptive defense. "Then Zakuul ended the war and put their crushing quota into place. I barely got out with a ship under me."

"At which point you switched over to deep-space recovery and salvage," Hylo's interjection jerked both heads back. "And you," she turned to Arleyk. "To freelance analysis. Complementary disciplines, don't you think? Doesn't matter if you don't, this is a two-person job, it's either both of you or nothing, and you have to agree up front."

It was classic Hylo, Kanner recognized a moment later. She'd trapped them both with ease. He, of course, would never turn down the chance to work with a woman who seemed to have walked out of the better class of his fantasies. And Arleyk, he grasped from a noted omission in her explanation, clearly wanted to get off Odessen and didn't have a ship of her own.

"I'm in," he responded at once.

"Yes, we are agreed, no need to keep us in suspense," the golden-cloaked skull flickered back and forward.

Hylo Visz tapped the datacard. "Recorded on here are the coordinates of several worlds mentioned in logs recovered from Iokath. With the cessation of hostilities the Doc finally had time to run a proper analysis, and that Findsman Yuun figured out a way to cross-index the locations. The information here should let you locate a half-dozen or so of the worlds Iokath targeted for their weapons tests." She flipped the datacard into the air, then effortlessly caught it between two fingers upon descent. "Honestly, there's probably nothing but rubble left, that's why it wasn't a high priority before this, but I don't like leaving unknowns out there unexplored. You never know what opportunities might be hiding. So you two are going to run them down."

Kanner looked from the datacard, to Hylo, and finally met Arleyk's piercing aquamarine eyes. "Iokath." The word hissed out between clenched teeth.

"Quite." Unexpectedly, they found themselves perfectly in sync.

Truthfully, he didn't have a lot of details. Almost everything about the bizarre mission to Iokath was classified, including the location of the artificial habitat. Despite that, the crew of the _Gravestone_ was terrible at keeping secrets, especially when drunk, and word had gotten around. "Well," Kanner shrugged. "I suppose we already agreed, and you just want reconnaissance right? An assessment of whatever's left in these systems?"

"For now that's it." Hylo nodded. "If you find something dangerous we've got people for that job."

"Does anyone else have this information?" Arleyk questioned, a point the captain considered important. "The Empire? Republic? Perhaps Iokath itself?"

"Iokath's baking in killing radiation, and the only other people who could have this information are from Zakuul. If you run into them, well, run." Hylo smirked.

"Fine." Kanner reached down and gulped the last mouthful of ale. "Consider me aboard. No time like the present to get going." He turned to his new companion and forced himself to meet those eyes head on. "My ship's the _Dustchaser_, docking platform seventy-eight. Meet up by twenty-three hundred local, we'll launch by midnight. It's just you, me, and my astromech Caytoo. Any problems with that?"

"None." Arleyk rose from the table in a smooth motion, silkily unfolding to upright. "I assure you I will arrive punctually."

As she walked out, Hylo chuckled again. "Yes, she is single," she jumped ahead to answer a question he'd not dared to voice aloud. "But if you take up that hunt, I'm pretty sure it'll be the more dangerous of the two. May the Force be with you captain."

After he left the cantina Kanner stood on the ledge for a long while, wondering exactly what he'd gotten into. "You had your chance at leaving," he grumbled under his breath as he looked up to the stars. "Now you've got Iokath." He supposed he deserved to get what he wanted. That's what victory meant, after all.

Chapter Notes

Kanner Elysar and Arleyk Smaugan _are_ canon characters, though both are no longer in the game. Arleyk was the Republic Smuggler vendor on Oricon, while Kanner served the same role on Yavin 4 prior to gear restructuring. I have chosen to have them join the Alliance, as smugglers, they logically fall under Hylo Visz's purview.

This story is set in 3630 BBY, after KOTET but before the 'War on Iokath' events that followed, essentially during the period when the Uprisings take place.


	2. Chapter 2

Chapter Two

"I must say, your ship is in better condition than I expected," Arleyk noted moments after coming aboard.

"She's a modified NX-1200," Kanner instinctively moved to _Dustchaser_'s defense. "I've added custom sensor enhancements and endurance upgrades, ideal for deep-space scouting and recovery missions. She's a bit older, but still in good shape."

"You seem to have downsized the crew space," a slightly raised eyebrow questioned this choice.

"I wasn't using it," he bit back, perhaps a bit more harshly than he intended. "When you're not running standard commercial routes there's no money in passengers," he amended. "And I use droids when I need extra hands. They don't mind being stacked in the hall. So, yeah, that means there's only one other bunk, sorry."

"I shall manage." Arleyk dumped her bag onto the lower bunk, somewhat surprisingly she not brought any additional luggage, though from the way she strained to carry it the contents had to be heavy. "I assume you intend to insist on monopolizing the piloting duties, and as that is surely the captain's prerogative I would never challenge such, but I wish you to know that I am fully qualified to stand any standard shipboard role and I have no intention of merely being baggage." The insistence behind this declaration was fierce enough to cook with.

"Right," Kanner gave it a moment's thought. "Look, Caytoo's my co-pilot, and my chief engineer." The little reddish droid warbled affirmatively from the engineering bay. "But like I said, we've got enhanced sensors, and I'm not really sure what we're looking for with this Iokath stuff. A sensors officer would be handy."

"That will do." Agreement was terse, but forthcoming.

After that, he largely put the blue-clad woman out of his mind while running through the pre-launch checklist. For all that she was sitting next to him and actively tapping away at the side terminal, she was no longer important. Only the ship, and making sure she was properly ready, mattered.

Call and response echoed between pilot and astromech as he ran down the steps with Caytoo. A well-oiled routine that cleared one mark after another in rapid succession. He interpreted each of the droid's warbles by experience and instinct; screen-based translation rendered unnecessary. No major obstacles arose. _Dustchaser_ was in good repair, having sat through Odessen's recent fiery conflict in the security of outer system orbit. Instead, her pilot carried that battle's unseen scars for them both. They met the predetermined deadline for liftoff with a quarter-hour to spare.

Odessen flight control was military optimized and deeply efficient, run by veterans the Bothan Admiral had pulled out of duty at Kuat. Compared to that hive of navy and industry the Alliance's operations were child's play, though the Eternal Fleet did present a complication as they answered only to the direct control of the Eternal Throne. Thankfully those massive ships weren't really designed for ground landings and spent most of their time in stable high orbits. _Dustchaser _shot by beneath them in a wide arc moments after she cleared the launch pad.

"Atmosphere breached, moving to escape velocity," Old habit dictated that the captain update events as they occurred, even when there was only an astromech for an audience. It helped maintain focus, and kept him in practice for times like these when someone else actually was seated next to him. "Gravity well escape in ninety-four seconds, calculating hyperspace path." On impulse, he tossed a remark to his new companion, a test to see if she really could serve as sensors officer. "Travel time estimate?"

"The first destination on the list of targets provided by Hylo Visz is labeled as WL428T73 according to Iokath's coordinate system." Arleyk's voice was completely professional now, devoid of all noble archness. "However, the Iokath system is extremely remote, found in the distant trailing sectors of the galaxy beyond Chiss Space and even Ilum. In order to reach this destination we need to travel almost all the way to Iokath itself before diverging and making a series of short jumps to pinpoint the star. _Dustchaser_ is quite fast for her class," the slight complement emerged without acknowledgment, but it did not go unnoticed. "But I anticipate at least forty-eight hours in initial travel and perhaps as much as twenty-four more during the pinpoint process."

"Guess we'll have plenty of time for mission prep then," Two full days of waiting aboard the admittedly cramped confines of the small freighter were not how Kanner would have liked to begin a relationship, professional or otherwise, with a beautiful woman, but there was no choice but to make the best of it. "Standby for hyperspace on my mark." A mere handful of seconds remained on the countdown panel. His hand wrapped around the hyperdrive lever. "And...mark."

A single gentle pull and stars extended into starlines as the little vessel jolted across dimensions and into the blue whorl of hyperspace. Old habit kept the captain's hands tight on the controls for three full breaths, until he was content that all had gone well with the transition and nothing catastrophic was about to happen. Only then did he let go and lean back in his chair. "Okay, we're underway. All lights are green. Caytoo, you have the con."

From the little engineering bay at the back the droid warbled an affirmative. There was no need for the astromech to occupy the cockpit to control the ship, and the long hours of extended hyperspace travel, broken up only by periodic course adjustments, were better handled by the endlessly patient machine in any case.

Carefully, Kanner turned around to look at Arleyk. He did his best to avoid getting lost in her eyes at the same time. It helped, he discovered, to look slightly past her at the panel behind, currently displaying the galactic map. "So," he began, cycling rapidly as his mind sought a neutral opening to present his mouth. "I've been operating on Zakuul time for the past week, running cleanup missions after the Eternal Fleet tore up the system. That clock runs six hours ahead of Odessen standard," Hence drinking in the middle of the afternoon. "Which makes it awfully late for me at the moment. I imagine you've been on Odessen time, we can switch back to that and start a sleep cycle right now if you want. Probably best if we're going to try and stay in touch with the Alliance during this mission."

"That seems reasonable," Arleyk nodded, grace restored. "You must be tired, feel free to use the refresher first."

"Right." Kanner discovered he hadn't thought much about that particular order.

As it turned out, the lady's utilization of the facilities involved considerable length, and he was well and thoroughly asleep by the time she crawled into the lower bunk. This failed to wake him, Kanner only woke for noises that indicated ship distress while on mission, and he managed an uninterrupted, if insufficiently lengthy, rest before Caytoo woke him in the newly defined morning.

Astromechs could be surprisingly conscientious when they wanted to be, and often displayed unexpectedly capable judgment regarding human social patterns. So it was that Caytoo woke Kanner slightly before Arleyk, allowing him to stealthily creep to the refresher and gain a step on the new day that prevented their schedules from crashing into each other. By the time the lady emerged out to the cockpit Kanner had dressed, scarfed down his breakfast, and worked most of the way through the daily status checks.

His passenger, whose elaborate getup apparently took an extended effort to put into place, briefly attempted to eat her own breakfast in the tiny galley suite by the food processor. This didn't last long, and Kanner turned about to glimpse Arleyk carrying a tray up to the cockpit before taking up her flight station.

"It appears the only decent chairs on this ship are here." She noted without bothering to look at him.

"Good chairs are expensive," he'd had the factory models swapped out of the cockpit and replaced with genuine nerf-hide custom pieces from a top-shelf Corellian firm that specialized in shipboard furnishings. They represented the ship's sole major concession towards comfort. "You're lucky there was a discount for buying two."

"Noted." Arlyek said nothing else for a time, apparently disinclined to talk while eating.

When she turned back a few minutes later Kanner expected some sort of biting remark as to the inadequacy of his stock food processor in making decent food. That would have been a fair criticism, truthfully, the stuff that machine outputted rarely managed to rise above the level of blandly palatable, but as the captain he felt obligated to be preemptively offended on behalf of his ship.

No such comment materialized. Instead, his newly assigned partner was all business. "Since we have some time to spare, I suppose we should both review the mission reports Hylo Visz provided. I took a quick glimpse last night, and it appears we've been granted access to most of the reporting from Iokath. I intend to go forward on this with the most information possible."

"Right." It was a solid plan, and certainly better than filling the hours playing games or watching holodramas. With the blue of hyperspace swirling ahead there was little need for any activity by the crew. Caytoo was fully capable of handling standard maintenance, and in Kanner's experience got rather irritated when organic beings got in his way. Besides, he couldn't help but wonder what had really happened on Iokath. The drinking stories had been almost impossible to believe.

As it turned out the truth was worse than anything implied by drunken ramblings. The _Gravestone_'s crew, as it turned out, had mostly just seen Iokath. The commander and his companions had walked through the expanse and encountered its terrible residents. Kanner would have discounted some of the after-action reporting as a fantasy, except that he'd met Aric Jorgan, and the stiff-necked Cathar officer didn't have a creative bone in his body. Though it lacked the vivid descriptions provided by several others, his report corroborated pretty much all the particulars.

"A megastructure enclosing an entire star," Kanner broached the topic as he laid out lunch on his own tray. "Plus an orbiting fabrication ring. Enough resources and space to support the population of an entire sector in one star system, and everyone's dead. Nothing but droids left."

"The catastrophic failure is extreme," Arleyk nodded as she put together her own meal. "I've studied a number of devastated civilizations, species, and worlds. Complete extermination is very rare. It speaks to the devastating power of their weapons, something we have both observed in person."

"True." _Dustchaser_ had stared down the guns of the Eternal Fleet over Voss, when he was drafted to transport munitions to the desperate defense of that world. "Funny though," Kanner remarked with a forced chuckle. "Zakuul seems less intimidating now, for some reason. I thought they'd built that fleet themselves somehow. Turns out they just stole it."

"Perhaps," a tight expression passed over the beautiful face as this comment received due consideration. "Though the ability to acquire such vast resources suggests that either Valkorion was extraordinarily capable in his ability to gain access to the legacy of this civilization, or that Iokath was almost criminally irresponsible with their weaponry. I suppose we must hope it was the former."

"Yeah," that was a grim thought indeed. Kanner glanced back to the navigation panel. "I suppose we're the lucky ones who get to find out, aren't we?"

"Indeed," Arleyk appeared to share his trepidation. "These reports leave many questions unanswered. Not surprising, considering the circumstances, but I've found nothing to suggest why the Iokathi constructed this artificial world in the first place, or why they engaged in such devastating weapons development projects at all. It does not appear that they were under threat from any outside force. The logic does not present itself to me. I dislike such puzzles."

Kanner hadn't thought that far ahead, but as he digested the implications he found them no more appetizing than they'd sounded on Arleyk's lips. "You're right, it's bizarre, but I doubt we'll find the answers out here. It's all probably baking away on Iokath."

"I suppose that depends on how thorough the designers truly were." Arleyk concluded grimly.

They returned to the reports after lunch, reading through everything available, and then going over it again. Eventually they'd both had enough, and after checking the hyperspace charts to discover that they were thoroughly outside the known galactic map, Kanner broke down and brought out the cards. The former curiosities dealer proved to be a challenging opponent, but as they switched from one game to the next the salvager managed to mostly hold his own. He won a moral victory after dinner by talking her into letting Caytoo play. The little astromech trounced them both, and proper shipboard balance was thus restored.

Chapter Notes

The NX-1200 is a canonical freighter class. One was shown crashed on Balmorra. The design vaguely resembles the Corellian YT designs of OT vintage.

Iokath's position on the galactic map appears to indicate that it is indeed way out there (and somewhat oddly that it's nowhere near Zakuul). I have chosen to represent the worlds mentioned in the testing logs as being relatively close by for the most part, within the same sector even. As a result getting to them takes some work and necessitates navigating to Iokath directly, using the hyperspace route logged by the Gravestone and the Eternal Fleet, before going anywhere else.

Regarding the concealment of information on Iokath, this seems only logical, considering how frightening that information would be and how Iokath's existence would go on to destabilize the galaxy when the Order of Zildrog later leaked said information. No doubt some of it would gradually filter out, as in addition to the crew of the Gravestone some number of Zakuul military personnel witnessed events on the megastructure, but at this time data security is still meaningful.


	3. Chapter 3

Chapter Three

"Realspace reversion in three, two, one, contact!" With a flicker of pseudomotion, blue swirls burst apart into starlines and then the backdrop of the starfield took shape once more. Kanner's eyes scanned relentlessly across his instrument panels, seeking any potential anomaly that might threaten his ship. "And…" he glanced upward and checked his visual scan last. "We're clear. System is open, no debris in proximity. No active power signatures. IFF monitoring shows an empty board."

As he paused, Arleyk picked up her end from the sensors board. "Scans show a single K2-type star, and a system with five planets. One tidally locked high-temperature gas giant, a super-terrestrial planet, and three small ice-rock mix planets further out. Atmospheric signatures indicate our target is the second planet, none of the others is even remotely habitable."

"Well, that's convenient anyway," hands danced across the controls and he made a series of slight maneuvers. "Plotting a course to take us into orbit now."

With the system empty of other traffic and no one to complain, this was the matter of mere moments as Kanner laid in a microjump that carried them in less than two seconds of hyperspace travel across the entirety of the system. After that, it was simply a matter of a few gentle maneuvers to pull into a stable orbiting position.

"The target planet is approximately two-point-two standard planetary masses, but appears to have a large low-density mantle layer and a modest core. Consequently surface gravity is only 1.15 standard. Atmosphere is breathable, with both increased oxygen and carbon-dioxide concentrations compared to standard, with some fairly unusual trace chemicals though the system isn't flagging anything as harmful." Arleyk continued her narration apace as they passed through an initial orbit.

"Surface appears to be upwards of eighty percent ocean, with only three large continental landmasses and few substantial islands. I believe this world is older and geologically very stable, with no evidence of volcanism. Lifeform readings are present, but the terrestrial indicators are far below the standard curve for this composition. Oceanic indicators are much closer to expected values, so I suppose that counts as our first point of evidence for Iokathi attack. Something odd about the ocean numbers," she paused briefly, and a sharp intake of breath followed. "Oh, I see. It appears that the ocean on this world contains lethal concentrations of toxic salts."

"Guess we won't be swimming." Kanner quipped, keeping his own eyes on the board. Outside the cockpit the world spun by slowly below, a dark and cold midnight blue sea broken up by vast, vaguely violet vistas of the three continents.

"Indeed," Arleyk concurred. "Sensors aren't picking up any significant signs of technology or remnant structures, or even forests. The ecosystem appears to be nothing but simple mats of low-growing moss-like plants and fungi. It looks like whatever weapon was used on this world scoured down practically to bedrock." Her precise diction adopted a somber tinge.

Silently, Kanner felt his own mood drop down toward the morose. Part of him understood that planetary bombardment was a legitimate tactic in war, a way to spare your own soldiers that hardship of ground combat, but even accepting that, obliterating everything down to the bedrock layer could not be considered anything but monstrous overkill. The Iokathi had annihilated this world and killed everyone who lived on it, not just the sapient residents, but even the animals. Only sludge and bugs remained.

Suddenly, an indicator light flashed on the panel.

"Power reading!"

"Comm signal!"

They both shouted at once. For a brief moment, Kanner turned and met those blue eyes. Recognition blossomed there in that frozen second before they returned their focus to this unexpected outcome.

"I'm breaking orbit," he decided at once. "We'll circle around and make a dive scan pass. Caytoo, process those indicators. I want to know if we recognize whatever's down there." He didn't think it likely, ancient remnants wouldn't be in his database, and the chance of any Iokath tech being on the short list Hylo had provided was minimal.

Arleyk interjected with a new detail before any of that could happen. "I'm parsing the contact, and it's not one strong signal, but a large number of weaker ones in close proximity, with active communications. It's coming from a small fourth landmass, what looks to be the remnant of ancient oceanic uplift. It could be a sensor net, or a power station, or-"

Caytoo blasted a short and harsh set of beeps. One glance at the screen translation revealed the truth to Kanner, a reality that plunged into his stomach like ice. "Or a whole bunch of Skytroopers."

"Oh." Arleyk stared at her panel. "Yes. That does match the output." Her eyes narrowed and she leaned in to the screen. "But why are there Skytroopers out here? The commander recalled the Eternal Fleet, they ought to have returned to Odessen."

"Good point," Gritting his teeth, Kanner slewed _Dustchaser_ around to make the dive pass into the atmosphere for a close in scan. "Maybe they got left behind," he considered aloud. "There's no cruiser in this system." No matter how one tried to hide, he had the same sensor upgrades that the rest of the Alliance did and wouldn't miss it. "And I'm not seeing any drop units either."

"The Gemini network could have failed to collect these detached units upon receiving the recall order," this cold musing from Arleyk offered little comfort. "Especially if the cruiser left them here and abandoned the situation earlier. If so," the deduction that followed crept coldly along Kanner's spine. "They are likely still in base extermination mode."

"Well," jaw clenched, he put the freighter into the hard dive, shields maximized forward. "We're about to find out. Keep your eyes open, I want to know what kind of firepower we're up against. If it's just base models we can blast them to bits from low-altitude."

As they screamed downward toward the ever-expanding purplish-green landmass, he doubted they would be so lucky. The ground below was softened and rolling, shaped by eons of erosion since the last major volcanic event on this stable world. Long shallow ridges extended from one end of the roughly oval island to the other, broken only by thin rivulets of carved runoff. The skytroopers, visible on the tactical screen as little golden pinpricks, clustered near the center of the landmass in squads spread across a few dozen square kilometers.

At the bottom of the arc, moments before Kanner moved into the pre-planned loop back to orbit, Arleyk called out a regrettable discovery. "Missile flares," her voice remained steady despite the sudden danger. "There are rocket skytroopers down there."

"Blast!" With a hard yank on the controls _Dustchaser_ spun to the side, rolling over and over in a stomach-churning pattern before blasting upward in a sharp full-throttle assent. The evasive maneuver sent bile rising up Kanner's throat as the inertial dampers struggled to compensate, but they were more than enough to shake off the shoulder mounted missiles and quickly take them out of range.

"I count a company-sized ground assault unit," the summary from sensors began as they were still climbing. "Probably one hundred and fifty units total, in fifty standard three-droid squads. Figure the usual planetary assault configuration, ninety base models, thirty heavies, and thirty rockets." She turned to look toward the front, drawing Kanner to look in turn. "Can we clear them out with the gun turrets?"

Kanner shook his head, chewing on regret as he tried to force the bile back down. "No. They're too small. To get any accuracy I'd have to drop well within rocket range, and they'd chew us up in a hurry." He slumped forward a little, though the return to the blackness of space drained the tension a little. "What I don't get is why they're even here. There's nothing down there right? Why would the Eternal Fleet deploy them? Why would it come to this system at all? They were programmed to destroy life, when they cut loose they went after worlds with a ton of people, not dead ones."

For a moment Arleyk appeared ready to say something, but then she turned back to her station. A brief silence followed, and the little freighter took up a geosynchronous orbit over the droid-occupied section of ground.

"The vault," words suddenly exploded from the sensor post. "I cannot believe I missed that."

"What?" Having someone launch missiles at his ship cut hard into the salvager's patience.

"Here," Arleyk adjusted something on her screen and beckoned him over with a single look. "The original report from Iokath, the one that mentioned this world in a weapons test, said that the natives had built a massive underground vault here." She pointed to the image on the screen, highlighting a massive black void in what belatedly became clear as a geological cross-section. "This island has a major series of natural caverns, but it looks like the vault was constructed in place within them." Her hand moved up. "And here there's a major gouge right above it, one that's much more recent. The Eternal Fleet tried to bombard their way into the vault. They must have been acting on some long-buried programming imperative. The skytroopers were just there to secure the perimeter."

"Okay," As he stared at the image it pulled together into something at least marginally believable. He could recall the reporting bit about the vault too, now that it was mentioned. "But why are we looking at a geologic scan? Shouldn't we have detected this vault? Especially if it's that big," the image in question described a structure that had to be kilometers in length, divided into dozens of chambers. The signal ought to have dwarfed that of the Skytroopers.

The expression on Arleyk's face suggested she'd entertained similar thoughts. "It must be entirely without electrical power. Whatever artifacts they've stored must be entirely inert."

"A bunch of inert artifacts that the Eternal Fleet didn't quite finish destroying, with a whole company of Skytroopers standing guard. That's just perfect." He looked briefly to his own screen. "And this is it isn't it? The only thing of interest on the whole planet."

"It would appear so, yes."

Kanner fell silent. He stared out into the blackness of space, from time to time he glanced down to the purple-midnight planet. Something about the whole situation tugged at his mind, uncomfortable and frustrating. "Okay," he spoke up at last. "Let's look at the knowns. _Dustchaser_ can't take on those Skytroopers. A properly shielded assault shuttle could sweep 'em all up easy enough, but who knows when the Alliance would dispatch one all the way out here. But," he reached over to tap the scan model. "They have a good two hundred meters of rock between them and the vault anyway, and it'd be really pushing it with the guns to try and blast through that for access, so maybe it doesn't make any difference." He gave his newly assigned companion a long look. "I'm guessing you want to get in to that vault and take a look around, see if there's anything left. Is that actually something we can do?"

"Fair." The look on Arleyk's face suggested that he'd managed to impress her, at least a little. "Let me take a closer look at these scans. It does not appear that the vault was intended to be accessed by blasting from the top, so there must be an alternate route. If we can find it, perhaps we can ignore the skytroopers entirely."

"Take your time," the ship needed a solid set of diagnostics to see if hard maneuvering jarred anything loose before going back into hyperspace anyway. Letting her poke around in the data cost nothing.

Twenty-minutes later, while Kanner knelt in engineering to hold up a condenser so Caytoo could realign a locking ring, the call came from the cockpit.

"I found the access point."

"Be there in a second." He very deliberately finished the repair first before walking the few steps back to the cockpit. The expression of excitement that lit up Arleyk's gorgeous features when he arrived made him wish he'd hurried instead.

She pointed a gloved finger at the screen the moment her arrived. "Here. The vault structure meets with the natural caverns of the kharst formation on the western end and these formations ascend through a series of highly vaulted, meaning walk-able, caverns all the way to within a few meters of the empty outline roughly ten clicks west. I've already pinpointed an access point we ought to be able to open with just a single grenade."

That was a positive, Kanner reflected, considering their general lack of serious heavy explosives. "How long is the underground route?" He asked. It made a big difference, how far they'd have to crawl through the dark.

"About fifteen clicks, there's a lot of back and forth." Happiness faded from her expression. "Call it a two-day excursion."

He thought about this, hands wrapped around the back of the pilot's chair, eyes stared at the screen, but unfocused, not really seeing.

Arleyk wanted to get into that vault no matter what, Kanner recognized. Of course she did, artifacts were her stock in trade, and the sole repository of an extinct species eliminated by Iokath held the promise of the galaxy's newest hot commodity on the antiquities market. It would be just like after Ziost, maybe even bigger.

Though hardly immune to the lure of profit, the salvager had to consider the risks to himself and his ship. Beyond that, he recalled Hylo trusting him with the crystal. They had a mission, and the cultural legacy of whoever had once lived on this world weren't part of it. That left one question, what did the contents of the vault have to say about Iokath?

Kanner couldn't find answer to that question, no matter how hard he thought about it. The possibilities were simply infinite.

In the end, that was enough to push him over the fence. "Two days then. Stock up, I'm not having Caytoo wait on the ground with those rockets wandering about. It'll be you and me alone. You up for that?"

"Absolutely." Arleyk replied with a hungry smile.

Chapter Notes

The species that built Iokath has no official name. I'm having Alliance personnel refer to them as 'Iokathi' for now. Ideally I'll get to the point where I can reasonably make up an actual name for the species.

The exact firepower level of Rocket Skytroopers is unclear, but missile attacks against shuttles are a thing in SWTOR, so this feels reasonable to me.


	4. Chapter 4

Chapter Four

The planet's surface was coated with a layer of purplish-gray plant goo as monotonous as it was depressing, but everything changed the moment they entered the caves. The vast dark hallways, towering vaults beneath the earth buttressed by a forest of columnar stalagmites and stalactites, were practically bursting with complex life. Eerie fungal forms, diaphanous but surprisingly solid, spread like fractal spider webs across every surface and formulated a labyrinth of living curtains in the open spaces. Pale pink and purples in a thousand shades marked their forms, all fed by nutrients dripping down through uncountable microscopic rivulets from above. A wild variety of tiny articulated creatures, mostly vaguely resembling some form of shrimp, moved among this false vegetation, feeding in myriad ways. They in turn supplied the forage of numerous scaled amphibian creatures, sleek-bodied things bordering on the serpentine with vertically oriented shovel-shaped heads and sharp digging claws.

Some of the latter grew to significant sizes. Not twenty steps in Kanner caught a glimpse of one white-and-purple spotted creature that matched the size of a full-grown womp rat, and had teeth to match. His hands went to his pistols at the sight, thinking the animal large enough to be dangerous, but it fled into the depths of wavy fungal growth at their footfalls.

"Impressively lively down here," he noted, testing the earbud and chin-mike connection with Arleyk. "Why haven't they moved back up to the surface?"

"Unclear," she answered from a few steps behind him. "My guess is something to do with the oceanic toxins. On an island this small they're probably blown everywhere by the wind. These subterranean animals may lack immunity, so they can't survive on the surface."

"Fair enough," it was sufficient explanation for the salvager's purposes. Most of his life had been spent in spaceports, ships, and stations where green referred to a paint color. No one would ever describe him as an animal lover.

They walked in darkness, choosing to rely on the infrared visual options in their goggles rather than carry an open light. Arleyk said she did not want to spook anything that might be present in the caves, while Kanner considered it a possible security measure. If they encountered an open shaft to the surface at any point he didn't want to make a Skytrooper curious.

Going was relatively easy. Though the stone floor of the caverns had been worn mirror smooth by thousands of years of water, the fungi now coating it provided a good grip for their boots. Sheets of white curtain material and sturdy fungal struts choked a number of passages, but open trails abounded despite this. Finding a route along the guideline indicated by their goggles was simple enough.

"Something large must live here," Arleyk noted quietly as they moved through the first few galleries. "To clear a path through these fungi. Be careful, it might be aggressive."

"Right," fighting beasts in the dark was hardly a new experience for Kanner. The words recalled several brutal encounters with nameless red-shaded things in the bottom of Yavin ziggurats. He checked to make sure his blasters were fully charged as they advanced.

They followed a path computed by Caytoo from the sensor data, a method familiar to both members of the pair. Software projected a guideline along the edge of their goggle-based vision, keeping them to a specific path and adjusting seamlessly when they were forced to tramp around impassable fungal growths or fallen stone columns. Without this aid they would have been instantly lost.

A datapad in his belt ran a step-matching automapper as a backup, but the scavenger trusted in the technology. He'd done it before, a hard-learned deep space trait. Failure to accept that you needed the machines led to paranoia and paralysis. Thoughts of batteries or moisture damage were pushed aside in favor of continued steps forward.

The occasional look back suggested Arleyk lacked such weary comforts with wilderness gear. In particular, she periodically tugged at her filtration mask. A clear sign of a poor fit, one that he stopped to adjust carefully at the midway point. "You need the straps to be offsetting to keep the seal steady," he explained while pulling on the flexible strips. "Otherwise sub-vocal motion will force the smart-polymer seals to constantly adjust. That tugs on the skin. Keep to the same mask and it'll gradually fit better to your face, like wearing in a good pair of boots."

"Is that why you wear yours so often?" This acerbic query came after he accidentally tugged on her braid.

"Partly," Kanner admitted. "I've also been told it looks intimidating. That never hurts when you're selling hardware."

This seemed to mollify her. They pressed onward without further comment.

The wonders of the subterranean world were many, but even they grew rather monotonous kilometer after kilometer. Especially in the color-drained false palette of infrared examination. The hike simply ground on, their footfalls ringing louder than all other sounds in the caves. They passed sparkling crystal formations, eerie greenish pools of absolute stillness, and inverted trees of red-blue fibers dozens of meters in length. Kanner had no idea what any of it was. For the most part he ignored it all, keeping his eyes on the next step. By contrast, his companion periodically paused to snap holoimages.

When shot a questioning look, she had an explanation prepared. "This is a new alien world, never seen before, and who knows when anyone will visit again. Why waste the opportunity?"

"I guess." Kanner had seen lots of weird alien life, and for the most part no one paid anything for pictures. Pharmaceutical samples were a different story, but he lacked the expertise to properly cache those. Perhaps Arleyk knew someone who would pay a finder's fee. He had the feeling her contact list had his beat by parsecs in the diversity department.

They moved slowly, taking regular breaks for water and the occasional ration bar. The step-matcher proclaimed the trek at just over fourteen kilometers in total, but the full trek took nine hours to complete. By the end ankles and feet protested considerably, and preemptive grumbles about the return route dropped from both pairs of lips.

At the edge of the vault the cavern system shifted in profile, high vaults collapsing downward and flattening out, as if the grand chambers had been somehow squeezed by an immense force from above or below. The actual vault entrance remained concealed beneath a thick, wall-cloaking layer of fungal sheeting, but the chamber immediately prior was oddly open and expansive. Ratty strips of white and purple lay scattered across the ground, the sign of something torn away.

"Caution," Arleyk interjected as they passed between chambers to glance upon this tattered vista. "This looks like the lair of a large predator."

"Point." He had to agree. Something big had done this at least. Not waiting to be surprised, he drew both pistols. Arleyk followed suit with her own blaster.

Footfalls echoed off the walls as they crept across the floor, shifting back and forth in the hope of spotting any presence before it found them. Kanner cranked the gain on the infrared, hoping to detect a temperature difference between any lurking presence and the backdrop, but found nothing. His fingers grew tight from extended grips on the blaster handles.

He had just begun to relax, almost reached the far wall and the narrow constriction that marked what had to be the access point, when the ambush fell.

It came from a pool of black water, utterly still and perfectly concealed against the cold stone. A bursting lunge carried the beast clear through the air and into striking distance in one explosion of motion. A massive webbed hand broad enough to wrap around a human head and sporting claws longer than fingers slammed into Kanner's shoulder before he could even register the assault.

Brutally powerful, the stone-carving blades splashed through the reinforced padding of his duster and scored deep lines through the carbon composite beneath. The armor went stiff at the impact, plating reacted to disperse damage and shield the tissues beneath, but the blow still sent pain ringing up and down the limb from fingertip to collarbone and hurled him to the floor.

He rolled over and over, desperate for distance. Images caught in blurry motion resolved into a partial image of a blocky, wet-skinned beast with massive digging claws, huge eyes, and stubby fangs. His mind populated twitching recognition with the facsimile of an amphibious akk dog. Reflexes demanded he shoot.

Arleyk got there first.

The brilliant azure blot ignited the darkness with a thousand colors. Flashes cascaded across the fungal mats and illuminated the skin in green and purple swirls. Snapped out in a rush, her aim proved true, and the bright spear of energy impacted high on the flank of the beast.

With a squeal of pain the creature reared. It shook in fury, injured but far from stopped. With a flick of the thick-necked skull it reoriented on the source that had dared to strike at it and charged.

Moving with a sweeping, vaguely sinuous low-slung motion interspersed with irregular hops and jolts, the amphibian evaded Arleyk's second shot. The cave floor rumbled as it closed, hundreds of kilos of muscled form rebounding against the stones. This shudder-shift path saw the third blast strike too low, and it flared against the stony claws, no more than a surface irritant.

Desperately, Kanner rolled over. Abdominal muscles strained as he bent upright to establish a firing position. Agony spiked in his left shoulder, but he forced the arm to move, both pistols leveled. Vision swam as he depressed the triggers and his first shots darted upward, hopelessly wide, to burn black streaks into fungi on the far wall.

He shifted, struggling to track the loping beast, but the haze clouding his vision made it impossible to fixate on such rapid jerks and shifts. Forsaking that option, he cranked the impulse on his blasters instead, raising the power to maximum, determined that if he could take the shot, it would be a killing blast.

A sick feeling radiated through mouth and jaw as he realized the chance would come when the predator slammed Arleyk's shattered form to the earth.

Until the blue clad woman surprised everyone.

Her left hand shot into one of the many pouches laced across her stomach. With the flick of a wrist she tossed a small spherical object out into the rapidly-diminishing space between her and the charging amphibian.

Day dawned in the cavern for the very first time.

The flashbang was merciless to the amphibian, a huge-eyed creature born of dark realms lit only by bioluminescence and tiny cracks. Hideous squeals ripped from its throat and it stomped and shook in panic, claws dug great gouges along random points of floor. All coordination failed it, senses overwhelmed.

It was almost as bad for the humans. Kanner's goggles reacted to the sudden pale brilliance by instantly shutting down lest their instrumentation bake and sizzle, and Arleyk's faced the same impact.

She took the simple course and tore off the goggles in the hopes of squinting out a shot before the illumination faded.

Too slow. Working in deep space, blasts of sudden illumination were nothing new to a salvager, shifting orbits did that do you sometimes. Nothing could be done to stop it, but the tactical grid in the mind could be sustained. The amphibian was a big creature, three meters long without even counting the tail and its rippling spine rose as high as standing human. Precision was not required.

A short shift of arms to the right and both triggers depressed in unison.

Pop-zap the discharge burst through the confined space, followed by a screaming hiss, each echoed over each other several times. Then silence, and the familiar smell of charred flesh and smoldering organs.

Goggles came off then. As the fury of the flashbang faded it emerged that both shots had scored deep through the belly, cooking sensitive tissue there. Death followed almost instantly.

Arleyk stood over the body, pistol in hand, but made no move to fire again. She held the other hand over her eyes, shielding the vulnerable organs. "That was…a good shot."

One look from the impact and then another back to the blue clad woman. "Good enough," he quipped, with considerably more confidence than he felt. With some effort, his arm still ached and was sure to blossom with a fearsome bruise later, Kanner managed to get to his feet and holster his blasters. "Good move with the flashbang."

"It worked, at least," she blinked repeatedly; indicative of eyes yet miserable. "Though next time I really need to have the shielding ready."

"That would have been nice, yeah," agreement came easily. Firing blind was nothing to get used to. "Shame it's not compatible with low-light vision modes." Walking a bit gingerly, he moved over to stand beside her over the fallen predator. The animal looked no less formidable in the fading brightness. "You think there's any others?"

"Probably not close by," a slight head shake accompanied the delivery of this highly welcome news. "They must be territorial. These caves are productive, but the whole island probably supports one hundred a most."

Unless there were similar caves elsewhere, which seemed unlikely given the toxic nature of the oceans. That meant whatever lived here was all of the creatures everywhere. Kanner almost felt bad for shooting it when he thought about that. Almost.

"Let's not waste any time then," he decided. "I want to get into this vault before there are any more surprises."

As one, they turned toward the alcove that must hide the entrance.

Chapter Notes

I have tried to incorporate as much detail from the character models into the story as possible. Kanner, for instance, is shown wearing a pair of goggles around his neck and a half-face mask with filters, both of which are referenced in this chapter. Likewise, Arleyk's model features a number of prominently displayed pouches.

This is the first chapter with any combat, so it seems a decent place to discuss combat abilities. These characters are both based on vendor characters and therefore have no preset combat abilities in the in-game data, so I had to decide what their abilities should be. As they are not PC-level characters they do not have PC abilities, and their capabilities are built around companion characters instead. Kanner has the standard dual-pistol DPS spec, shared by characters such as Hemdil Tre, Nico Okarr, and Vette. Arleyk utilizes the single-pistol DPS spec shared by characters such as Doc, Elara Dorne, and Talos Drellik with the single modification that instead of electrodact she uses flashbang as her stun, as written in this chapter. Unlike standard companions, however, these two will not be changing specialization at any point.


	5. Chapter 5

Chapter Five

Kanner expected a wall. He packed a plasma torch, laser drill, and a set of industrial explosives in anticipation of having to bring down just such a barrier. Instead, after they cleared away the thick sheets of fungus and underlying blanket of slime, he discovered an actual door.

Not an ordinary door, or course, but rather a massive circular vault-sealing structure linked in place to wall edges visible beneath the surrounding stone by huge embedded bolts. Tapping on the barrier with the butt end of the plasma torch suggested it was at least three decimeters deep. "Not durasteel," he checked over the surface with a portable chemical analyzer but got no confirmed results. "Probably some sort of homegrown alloy with a mix of heavy elements. Seems plenty tough though."

"I don't understand," Arleyk mused from one step to the right. "We detected no power sources, but surely this sort of security system would require at least a basic input pad and processor."

"No," Kanner shook his head. He hid a brief smile behind his filtration mask. "It's completely analog. I've seen it before." He gritted his teeth. "Surprisingly effective. You see these indents cut into the surface," he pointed to a series of fist-sized sections removed from the outer face. "They're the spokes on a wheel that has to be turned to pull the bolts back in. Once we do that, the door can be pulled open. The tumbler," his fingers moved to atop a small cylindrical protrusion in the center. "Controls the bolts, and it looks like if it's triggered incorrectly the system will break and lock the bolts into place."

"But we can cut through these bolts."

"Sure," that was true enough. "Plasma torch will go through this in just a few seconds, but then we're stuck with a metal disk weighing a thousand kilos that we can't easily move. We'd have to blow it off. That's the strength of this method." He tapped the tumbler again. "The weakness is here. Analog mechanisms have catch points, and with modern surveillance gear they can be discerned easily enough." He reached down and put his goggles, now safely rebooted, back on. "Give me just a few minutes."

Partly he was showing off, but only a little. Cracking an analog combination tumbler was easy, just a matter of monitoring micro-vibrations through the mechanism and sorting them into the correct order. The math behind the second part was actually fairly impressive, if you were doing it in your head. Kanner had worked out a program to handle the process with Caytoo after the first such door he'd opened years before. At this point it was mostly a matter of turning slowly and evenly.

Once the numbers lined up on the HUD, he put the tumbler back to its start setting and ran through the pattern of turns, monitoring the clicks as the lock unbolted in sequence. The last detachment was clearly audible, tension laid upon bolts for thousands of years suddenly released.

"And now we turn, and hope the hinges held up over the years."

The widely spaced wheel was awkward to shift. They had to stand on opposite sides and work together to turn it, something no doubt intended by the designers. After a brief moment of discombobulated tugging back and forth they managed to work out a rhythm and slowly a wheel that had sat in place for thousands of years ground through the dust of ages and began to pull in the protecting bolts. When the rotations stopped, the massive door swung inward at the slightest push, precision engineering allowed the motion to be all but friction-less despite the passage of time.

Arleyk pulled out a glow rod and raised it above her head. Shining yellow brilliance pierced within the darkness of the ancient storehouse. Cautiously, the pair stepped inside. The massive portal hung open behind them.

Imagination had led Kanner to expect some vast and towering space, all sterile and metallic, filled with heavy objects in secure cases. The kind of place a Hutt might use to store valuables, with all elegance sacrificed to security, more of a bunker than anything else. What they found instead resembled a combination of museum and temple.

There were many rooms, each with a height only slightly above Republic standards for ordinary dwellings, attached together by short connecting passages and arranged in some complex layout. Each formed a wide and expansive circular space, hewn out of the rock itself and by some cunning piece of engineering able to stand open without the need for load-bearing pillars in the open. A cursory examination suggested a series of metal struts laid at set degree-points along the outer walls took care of it.

Each room featured dozens of items, arranged in repeating patterns. Some rooms featured concentric circles, others vertical rings, and a third set ran in triple lines. The objects in question varied, though all shared a durable composition. Ceramics, glass, metals, these were formed into both classic statuary and eye-twisting abstract shapes. Objects of art sat side by side with what were surely industrial relics. Brief labels, etched onto pale golden metal, accompanied each piece. They formed words in no language he recognized, but they did utilize the familiar aurebesh characters. "Can you make any sense of this?" he asked his companion.

"The phrases are unfamiliar to me," Arleyk replied, eyes moving about in constant calculation. Her holorecorder flashed with every turn, imaging over and over. "And the aurebesh symbols are in a very old style, probably not Republic, perhaps a sign of Rakata influence. It's not the Iokathi language, that much is certain, but otherwise it doesn't match any other system I'm familiar with, so it presumably represents a home grown variant."

"Well, that's a pity." It would have been nice to know what any of this stuff was supposed to be, or why it had been placed there. There was a distinct lack of anything self-explanatory, like paintings of historical events, though animal motifs were visible decorating some items.

Arleyk surprised him with an optimistic retort. "This is a very large sample." Her neck swiveled back and forth to encompass the many rooms. "I am confident that a protocol droid will be able to interpret this language given such large amounts. Though, it is curious, I'm not sure there is only one."

"Huh?" All the little symbols looked the same to Kanner.

"Everything in this place is organized in a tripartite pattern," the curatorial part of his companion came fully to the fore. "Sets of three rooms, each room containing three sets of artifacts, and unless my mapping software has made an incorrect conclusion, ninety-nine rooms in total. The method is inescapable," her lips compressed to a taught line. "It must have vast cultural significance, most likely a religious component as well, but out of each set of three the individual rooms are very different. Layouts are not the same and the styles behind the artifacts and labels shifts, a pattern that repeats. I suspect that this vault contains the repository of three distinct groups, interwoven."

Listening to this, recalled staring at the planet from space. The purplish image with its clear lines. "Three continents, and a toxic ocean."

"Exactly." He was rewarded with a bright flash of recognition from brilliant azure orbs. "This island is the only other landmass of any significant size, and it is still too small to accommodate a civilization. No one lived here, it was chosen as a repository for sacred goods by all three groups working in concert."

"Makes sense," the idea of a joint multi-cultural museum was reasonable enough. He was pretty sure his father had taken him to one as a child. "But why is this place full of nothing but vases and power cores? Where are the servers? The holobooks? Sith, there aren't even any lights."

A scowl played across the lovely features. "You are correct, strange as it may seem. This place was deliberately designed to last a very long time, all without any actively powered systems. The latter only makes sense if they believed electrical activity would somehow compromise it."

Understanding dawned through Kanner at the same time it spread across Arleyk's face. Cold twinges struck his stomach at the idea. "They knew the attack was coming," he whispered. "They knew they were doomed and built this place to preserve what they could."

"Yes," her face briefly went almost as blue as her shirt. "They must have reasoned, apparently correctly, that a society as advanced as Iokath's would consider inert objects of no consequence and avoid attacking." Her eyes grew briefly foggy in the reflected light of her glowrod. "The dedication required to do such a thing, I can hardly believe it. To cast everything into darkness in the faint hope that it would be ignored, and that someday someone would find it, astonishing."

It was a daunting prospect to consider, such persevering fatalism. Kanner's mind rejected contemplating such things, it was too far afield from his focus. He retreated into the operational needs of salvage, the far simpler question of whether or not they could take anything of value out of this vault, anything that would tell them about Iokath. "There's a lot of stuff in here," he began carefully, choosing words he thought would least upset the curatorial impulse clearly ruling his ally in the present. "Way more than we could possibly haul off, even if we could get it past the Skytroopers. Truth be told, I don't even have the right packaging to secure a lot of it." Fragile ceramics and delicate metal filigree were well outside his usual cargo loadout. "Someone else will have to come back and do that. We're on an Alliance mission. Is there anything in here that might help the war effort?"

A spasm of anger briefly flashed across the pristine expression, but it vanished shortly thereafter as self-control enforced mastery. "You're right, of course," Arleyk admitted. "The layout suggests a joined room in the center, three parts combined into one. I suspect if there is anything measurably variant we will find it there."

Assembled after the fashion of beads inside a circle, the vault was actually rather large, and it was over a kilometer from the door to the middle. The resulting walk took some time, for something about being surrounded by millennia old relics from an otherwise extinct species demanded slow and reverent motion. Once there, however, the object was obvious.

In the center of the joined central chamber were three raised pillars, each at waist height. On top of each one rested a small cubic structure, slightly larger than a human skull in dimensions, inlaid with complex geometric designs. They were dark and lifeless, bearing only the shapeless gray shades of the metals used to form them, but there was no mistaking such objects.

Datacrons.

Arleyk dashed forward to examine the blocking devices at a run. "Hmm…" she mused aloud. "There's a definite Rakata influence, but it looks like there are substantial modifications. I suspect these were created based on second or third-hand knowledge of the technology, not any direct contact."

"Great," As far as Kanner was concerned, the more steps removed from the Rakata the better. He'd heard too many nasty stories about spacers torn apart by the things they'd left behind. There was a whole cadre of salvagers who'd gone to Belsavis and never come back. "But why don't they work? Those things are supposed to run forever."

"True," dark gloves tenderly caressed the edges of each item. "They should have an embedded crystalline matrix power system capable of meeting their demands for millions of years." Her jaw tightened. "Actually, should is inaccurate, they must have such a power system, its integral to the data matrix that allows them to operate. You simply cannot build a datacron that turns on and off. The Rakata design tech doesn't allow for it."

"How the Sith would you know that?" Kanner objected. He'd never heard of such a thing.

Her jaw compressed further, till her lips compressed to razor thinness. "I sold one once, to a slime-caked executive from Czerka with too much money and no respect for antiquities. He took it apart piece by piece while I watched."

"Oh," the salvager reflected that he was glad to be spared any sort of emotional attachment to his merchandise. "Well, everything here has been well-engineered so far. It doesn't seem like they'd leave junk in the most important spot. It must work somehow."

Bent over atop the devices, Arleyk briefly stepped back. Her holoimager flashed and she glanced through the eyepiece to check the results. "The pattern," she spoke suddenly. "It's held constant." Her eyes widened and she bent over the three stubby pillars, dark stone carved free from the base, seamless and natural. "Can it truly be that simple?"

Without any further warning, she grabbed each of the three datacrons, placed them on the cold floor, and pressed them together.

Three pulses, in time with the heartbeat, passed through each one, red, green, and violet. Immediately thereafter light burst out from the dorsal surface of the joined device and a brilliant image expanded into focus above. Precision holo, filled with color and definition, cohered.

Presented together were three female figures, outward-facing in triangular formation, shoulders touching. They were at once remarkably similar and utterly distinct. All were very close to human in form, though their bare fingers and toes displayed a greater range of angular motion than that of a human, and their eyes held no whites, being colored uniformly beyond the pupil. They were attired much the same, each wearing a short-skirted dress lacking sleeves and with long hair descending to their knees wrapped with ribbons into paired tails. Upon their arms were freestanding cloth bracers that trailed flowing fabric sheets joined behind them.

Such an outfit was stunningly impractical, and Kanner was sure it must hold some sort of ceremonial purpose.

The women varied by combinations of eye, skin, hair color, and stylized tattoos. One was charcoal-shaded with shock white hair and teal eyes; her marks were a series of rings in sequence. The next was chalk-shaded with matte black hair and purple eyes; her marks were concentric circles. The last was shaded a pale, purplish gray, with glossy black hair and yellow eyes; her marks were straight lines arranged in bracelet pattern.

"Not three cultures," Arleyk whispered beside him, awe clear in her voice. "Three species. Remarkable."

The images spoke. They rotated as words dropped from their mouths, so that phrases passed seamlessly from one to another, voices changing slightly between each species, blending together into something like a chant. Different colored eyes looked out to meet the faces of their human discoverers, awareness clear upon the expression of the interface.

Unfortunately, the datacrons did not speak Basic. They tried several languages, the rapid shifts in cadence and emphasis clear, but it seemed their world was so remote that none of the common trade languages penetrated here. Kanner dared try a basic greeting in Huttese, which he spoke with as much proficiency as a human throat could manage, but this too found no commonality.

Frustration reigned until Arleyk spoke to them in Rakatan.

The datacron trio reeled backwards in obvious shock, and oddly lit eyes stared down at the woman with expressions of confusion and fear.

She said something else, longer this time, and the images relaxed slightly, apparently mollified.

"I have a translation protocol for this," she turned to Kanner for moment. "Set your comlink to channel two-six-five-eight and follow the prompts. I think we both need to hear this. Besides, I don't know more than a few words on my own."

"Right," That made sense. The blasted Revanites had lit of a surge of renewed interest in the ancient conquerors, and apparently they'd had access to a complete linguistic database for the species, supposedly compiled by Revan himself. Whether or not that was true, and being on Yavin 4 hadn't left Kanner with anything but a lot of doubts where Revan was concerned, the Republic and Empire had both acquired the knowledge. It clearly hadn't remained contained.

He made the change over in time to hear the last of Arleyk's introduction. "And this is Kanner Elysar. We were sent to investigate your world and stumbled upon this vault through our scans."

"You are humans," the strangely musical shifting voices were oddly pleasant, but the constant motion distracted, especially given the translation that echoed in his ear. Kanner likened it to trying to hold a discussion with someone performing a ballet. "Who are found throughout the countless stars, and who were once our ancestors, but yours are a people without unity. Who sent you, and what prompted the journey?"

"We are part of the Eternal Alliance," Arleyk's answer was firm and composed, her body straight to present every bit of the considerable nobility she could summon. "A large interstellar government."

Blank looks passed across the faces of the trio. _Machines_, Kanner realized, jolted into recognition. This collaborative presentation was not a person, or persons, however much living minds might have been imprinted into the datacron. It was a system, and would struggle to assimilate circumstances outside of its programming without huge amounts of additional data. He suspected it would react to information it recognized. "We came here before a reference to your world was found on Iokath."

They reacted to that name, at least. "You traveled to the world of our destroyers?" The response was surprisingly frank. Fury glistened in the eyes of the white-haired female. "How did you survive?"

"Iokath is a dead world," Arleyk picked up the thread of this narrative, confidence increasing with each sentence. "Those who destroyed you in time destroyed themselves. Only computers and automata remain. They are no threat anymore."

That last was something of an exaggeration, the after-action reports suggested that the droid intelligences remaining on Iokath were plenty threatening. Despite that, Kanner thought it only a modest deception.

The projection took this announcement with surprising credulity. "That is not an unanticipated possibility," the spinning women replied. "Given sufficient time. In our divided state, timekeeping was not possible. Your aid in verification of the turn of years would be of great value."

Arleyk looked at him, implication in her eyes. Kanner thought about it for a time, reaching for a possibility. "I have the orbital scan data. If you have a model of your own, a long-orbit object match should indicate how much time has passed." He stared at the datacrons. "But we'll have to work out a handshake protocol. That could take some time."

"We are willing," the datacron responded with the casually infinite patience of machinery.

As it turned out, the process was surprisingly quick. The system was built around a Rakata base structure, a circuit system that Republic standards were themselves based upon. Combined with Arleyk's translation program producing a match was not especially difficult, it just required a series of careful splices and the production of a few bridge programs. Such maneuvers were well within Kanner's experience, though he repeatedly wished Caytoo could handle them instead as the process wore on and became truly tedious.

Arleyk used this interlude to transfer fully into historian mode, seriously interrogating the datacron on such topics as it was willing to reveal without any further confirmation. Snatches of this filtered through to the distracted technician, piped into his ears by the translation program. The only benefit was that the device split off its holo-representatives into three individual presences at this point, eliminating the oddly dissonant singsong vocal patterns.

The planet they were on, he learned, was called Soejitra, populated by three closely related species known as the Kame, Kime, and Kume. Isolated by killing seas until they developed powered flight, they had forged ahead with a coalition thereafter, unified by the actions of an order of scholar-priestesses who the datacron presences apparently represented. Eventually their first forays into space allowed them to salvage a half-abandoned colony ship and spur their society ahead to something resembling the technological capacity of the Republic's earliest era. Hyperdrive, unfortunately, had not been among those devices they recovered. Nor did such outdated technologies, even when mass-produced, offer the slightest chance of repelling a determined assault by the weapon-makers of Iokath.

An invasion that force-users among the triple-species had apparently predicted. The vault they now occupied, and the various artifacts it contained, had been stored as a fail-safe effort to preserve them.

"The attack happened, I'm afraid." Images of the surface were projected to the datacrons as confirmation. "The surface of your world was scoured fully, with nothing left behind at all. It seems none of your people survived," heavy sorrow infected these words and the blue-garbed frame shook as they were spoken. "But your vault was successful. In the absent of any powered technologies, it seems the Iokathi ignored it."

This revelation caused the machine intelligence to withdraw in shock for a time, and before they formulated a response, Kanner finished the retrofit.

"Connection online," he watched lines of code flash across his goggle overlay. "Synchronizing calendar, matching orbital position data, indexing is working, error-connection compensating, and…" The software gave a light ding as the process completed. "Whoa, okay, that's, a number alright."

"What number?" Arleyk demanded, shaking slightly as anticipation and stress warred throughout her slender frame.

"Five thousand, eight hundred, and forty-two," the count emerged in a long, unsteady exhalation. "That's how many years it's been since this vault was sealed over. Assuming these ladies' estimates are correct, their planet was probably attacked within a decade from that. That's a long time ago."

"Not so long, in the overall history of the galaxy," this arched note brought Arleyk's carefully crafted aristocrat mien fully to the fore. "But yes, a significant passage nonetheless. That would be during the Ductavis Era, long before the Sith. The careful efforts to preserve this vault are truly impressive. Regrettable that only their culture remains."

Unexpectedly, the datacron voices did not confirm this lament. Combined again into three, the priestess-images spoke out an unusual decree. "With the passage of time confirmed, we unlock the greatest truth of our charge. We too are naught but concealment. Soejitra's greatest treasure lies beneath."

"Beneath? What do you mean? What greatest treasure?" Arleyk fumed at the holograms, but received no reply.

Kanner turned the words over in his mind. As he did, he took a look at the pillars where the little cubes once rested. They were carved out of the natural bedrock of the caverns, but most of the vault was plated with heavy stone slab flooring, extremely solid volcanic rock that would take an eternity to erode. The supports for the datacrons were spread out so that they just avoided sitting atop a singular slab in the center of the room.

Propelled by curiosity, he stood up and walked over to it. A few test taps with his foot eliminated his initial suspicion that it might be hollow. Not yet satisfied, he bent down to examine the mortar holding the slab against its compatriots. This crumbled away against the edge of his gloves, a mere surface coating that concealed precision-engineered cuts. Nothing held the slab in place save for gravity.

"Huh," He stood up and turned to Arleyk. "So, there's lots of tricks to hiding things you don't want to be found in a storehouse. Under the floor's one of the oldest tricks in the book, but building your stash into part of the floor itself is only a little behind that." The layer of igneous material was only a few centimeters thick, beneath that was concealed some other dense commodity. "This looks heavy, but I think if we rig a double magnetic grapple we can lift it out." Luckily his companion had one to complement his own.

She was a deft hand with the system as well, mounting the points with precise motions and gesturing that they should both brace against the carved pillars. After that it took a mere button push and the slab jerked upward it fits and starts, bouncing lightly as vibrations saw it careen back and forth from one wall to another in the tiny space. Slowly it emerged into the air.

While the block of rocky material was flat on the back and universally black throughout, the front side displayed a series of uneven protrusions. These confused the eye and offered no clarity until they managed to pull the slab to the side and flip it over onto the floor.

"Void preserve us!" Arleyk gasped. Kanner's own curse was considerably more vulgar, but no less heartfelt.

The image presented by the slab was clear now. They mapped the contours of the humanoid form, feet and knees, elbows and face; a body half-submerged into the rock matrix. It bore the slightly modified features of one of the triple-species, a thin male whose face held the smoothness of youth, but otherwise this preservation was perfectly familiar. Kanner had seen an artifact exactly like this before, hanging on the wall of a Hutt crime boss.

Carbonite preservation. This person beneath the stone was still alive, locked into a timeless hibernation that had lasted for almost five millennia.

"How is this possible?" Arleyk questioned. "Carbonite preservation requires power input, otherwise the construct will slowly melt."

That was a very good point. Bending to the slab, Kanner noted the absence of the usual coil and monitoring structures found on commercially produced carbonite blocks. However, he found something else instead. "There's contact points here, hundreds of wiring attachments. Has to be a network flowing through the floor, probably drawing natural power from some ambient geothermal source. At that low level it wouldn't be detected by any long-range scans, and it must have been below the threshold for whatever probe droid they punched in here to acknowledge." As he thought about this he reached into one of the many pockets of his duster and pulled free a small disposable power cell. One quick multi-tool solder later and power was again being supplied to the block.

While he conducted quick repairs, his ally questioned the datacron. "How many? How many are there?"

"All totals were chosen in sanctity, to offer the goddess's protection upon those taken to wait for salvation. Power distribution demands meant each chamber could hold only one."

"Ninety-nine rooms," Kanner heard the words as if they were spoken from far way, so bound up in potential and reverence they were. "Three species, so thirty-three apiece. Sixteen males, sixteen females, and one priest for each." Arleyk's intuitive deductions were matched by confirmatory acknowledgment from the images. "Assuming the candidates were chosen for proper genetic compatibility and maximum fertility, that's just enough to serve as a viable starting point. These species could live again."

As he stared down at the frozen face these words hit like a hammer stroke. Joining the Alliance might have allowed one to claim that you were engaged in saving all life in the galaxy, but even on a shoestring that organization was large enough to reduce all but the senior staff to mere worker drones. The missions might be incredibly important, in the aggregate, but nothing he'd done in that service compared to holding the fate of three sapient species in his hands.

He was struck speechless, eyes clamped to the metal-etched face for some uncountable interval. Beside him Arleyk sunk down to the floor, vision unfocused in the general direction of the datacrons. The significance of the moment overwhelmed them.

It would require the mechanical archive, impervious to emotional strain, to break through the tableau. "The initial hope was that some number of our people would survive and seek out this refuge in order to spur renewal. However, we knew this contingency was also possible. We have no claim against your assistance humans, but will you aid us?"

"Of course we will," Arleyk answered without hesitation, and despite the lack of consultation, Kanner discovered he was in complete agreement. Without pause, but much regret, she elucidated the central problem. "But how can we? There are only two of us and one small ship. We would have to, to…" The words fell away in the absence of ideas.

Kanner took a deep breath then, gathering his resolve before speaking. "What we have to do," he said the words slowly, clear as he could make them around the weave of his filtration mask. "Is sleep on it." Blue eyes speared him instantly, but he continued, somehow undaunted by the gleam. "It's been a long day already, trudging here, fighting that creature in the caverns, absorbing all this. We're both exhausted and there's nothing we can do right now. This vault's sat here for thousands of years, a few hours won't hurt anything. We can consider our options properly with clear heads."

"I suppose that might be wise." Agreement came tentatively, but that was better than he'd expected.

"We recall the needs of flesh," the datacrons spoke in unison. "And understand. We can watch over this place now, while you rest."

That was as good an endorsement as any. Within minutes Kanner lay wrapped up in his duster against the wall, hat over his eyes. Tired muscles relaxed swiftly, and darkness crept up to push it all away for a while.

Chapter Notes

Aurebesh characters were established as predating the Republic in Dawn of the Jedi, with the Rakata using them at least occasionally. The Legacy of the Rakata flashpoint establishes that characters in SWTOR were able to communicate with the Rakata, which is why Arleyk is able to conduct translations during this chapter. As to why the Kame, Kime, and Kume knew the language, well, that would be telling.

Regarding the dating of this vault, well, that's a bit tricky. This story is set in 3,630 BBY, so Soejitra's vault was constructed and sealed in 9,472 BBY. Game canon does not establish exactly when Iokath was founded or when various weapons tests were continued beyond 'before the Manderon Period' meaning 7,000 BBY at the earliest. I have worked out a hypothetical timeline and will be attempting to keep things consistent throughout as more information is revealed.


	6. Chapter 6

Chapter Six

"Caution, we have detected an auditory disturbance."

Kanner jolted awake at the intrusion of the datacron's chanted vocalization. Blinking hard he swallowed the sour breath of the night before and lurched into motion. With a single motion his hat slid back into place and his arms slipped into his duster. As he fought through the protest of stiff knees to stand, the sound gradually rose in his ears. It was not loud, but steady, and the absolute stillness of the vault, all but devoid of dust across thousands of years of inert existence, carried noise great distances. A steady pattern, beats in absolutely perfect time, synchronicity manifest in stereo.

Only machinery could make such a noise, and the tenor of this particular echo was one well known to anyone who had fought the agents of Zakuul. Metal on stone, precision metered, belonged to the tread of Skytroopers.

"They found the vault!" Arleyk burst to her feet, face pale and lips bare, but mind fresh enough to have reached the same conclusion. "But how?"

One spare glance, directed at the trio of women floating above the floor as projected holoimages, offered an answer. That was the grave difference between conditions now and those one day before. Blue eyes followed the glance, and lips narrowed in agreement with this unspoken reasoning. "We have to act," she announced. "If these Skytroopers truly are detached, they'll be operating on extermination protocol. They'll find those stored here and destroy them."

"They'll destroy us too, if they can manage it," Kanner noted, a fate he considered of far more immediate importance. "And I don't think we can sneak past them, not with nothing but statues for cover." As the only organic life in the vault, and aside from the datacrons the only active technology, they surely stuck out like beacons on the droids' sensors. He drew both pistols. "So we fight. These things have a fixed protocol. A scouting probe is only three droids. We need to find cover and hit them the moment they come into view. Strike hard and fast and we can take 'em down." Skytroopers were deadly and durable, but in his experience the droids were only too willing to stand in place and take a pummeling if they could be caught in the open.

"I suppose that is the best plan on short notice," Arleyk agreed, drawing her own weapon. Muscles tightened across her face, grim readiness emergent there. She patted the little satchel attached to her lower back. "I have a small number of thermal grenades. Fair warning, if there is an opportunity, I shall utilize them."

"Good," worries about collateral damage were no match for the rush of possibilities that accompanied even a handful of combat-ready explosives. "Let's move, where's a good place to intercept?" Kanner realized she knew the map far better than he possibly could.

"Room twenty-three," she answered immediately. "It's one of the Kime rooms, so it has raised rings for cover, and all the artifacts there were bronzed metal statuary."

The description recalled the room they'd passed through on the way in. By the time she finished, Kanner was already running. They needed to get there first.

Thankfully, while Skytroopers could move with rocket-boosted speed when they wished too, their natural pace tended toward the reserved, steady, inevitability-inducing tread of empire. As a result, a human in a desperate hurry could steal a march on the killing machines. The pair of smugglers did so now, scrambling into covered crouches behind oddly abstracted representations of philosophical ideals forged from yellow-green metal just before the trio of silver-chrome automatons passed through the adjoining tunnel.

Carefully, fingers moving through unseen steps, output on his blasters adjusted to the new circumstances. At the very moment the Skytroopers grunted in recognition of new targets Kanner rose up, just high enough to put head and arms above the tri-level ring. He held his hands together, one atop the other, pistols directed at the central figure.

Trigger fingers came down, then up, and then down again, an endless sequence of shots spat out as fast as he could depress the ultra-light pull. Arms moved as he unleashed this storm of ruby-red bolts, swept outward to full extent, and then back in through a repeated crossing pattern. Weird waves of fire scattered through the air.

Blasting relentlessly in this way prohibited any real accuracy. The myriad bolts simply slammed into the general space surrounding the droids. Most hit the floor, the ceiling, or the opposite wall. Those that did ping off the chromed plating largely left naught but modest scorch marks as they failed to penetrate the advanced armor of the Zakuulan combat units. None found purchase on a critical system.

With the whip-chord reactions of combat droids, the Skytroopers turned and returned fire, walking shots from their blaster rifles along the floor and across the stone ring as they sought to pin down the human who dared shoot them. Kanner shuffled back and forth on his knees, hoping to confuse the units, but ruby blasts carved deep furrows in the stone before him. He had no more than a breath before a lethal strike found his flesh.

Single-minded in their programming, the Skytroopers all but ignored Arleyk when she failed to fire her own blaster. Content to lean in to the rapid suppressive barrage from the scavenger and rely upon their armor, they remained close-clustered and exposed when the small brownish sphere landed at the foot of the lead unit. By then it was far too late for even rocket-boosted droids to scatter.

Technology hardened in the forges of Iokath and refined by centuries of live-fire testing by the Eternal Empire did not break easily. Even Republic military spec was not enough to put them down with one grenade.

Fire flared and Kanner ducked as the explosion hurled casing shrapnel, stone chips, and statuary fragments all about the room. Burning cinders scorched against his duster but failed to penetrate its insulating layers. A little triangular sliver of some unknown alloy lodged against the surface of his hat, sticking out from the reinforced underweave. He ignored these pattering impacts and worked the settings on his blasters.

One quick roll to the right to evade oncoming fire as the Skytroopers fired blind and he rose to watch the smoke clear with both barrels charged to full power. He exhaled, steadied his hand, and aimed down the sights at the enemy on the right. Triggers depressed together.

Twin ruby bolts took the droid in the photoreceptors. The plating of the skull burst apart. Sparks showered out the rear of the head casing and molten circuitry spilled out onto the floor. With an exhausted growl of twisted metal and overloaded capacitors, joints gave out and a pile of discombobulated parts collapsed to the floor.

At the same time a series of bolts slammed into the droid on the left, one after another lancing through the vulnerable pelvic joints to send gouts of flame through the structure of the droid. Before the machine could raise its rifle in time to counterattack, Arleyk's shots took it to the floor.

The central skytrooper wasted no time in firing. It sprayed bolts in a tight arc. Stone shattered, spewing a cloud of shrapnel outward. On his left, Kanner heard Arleyk cry out as a piece of statuary before her exploded and she was thrown to the ground. A bolt ricocheted off some metallic object and slammed into his back plating. Armor took most of it, but he still felt the blossom of a nasty burn. Teeth gritted, he threw himself down.

Head flush with the cold volcanic stone, he squinted against the flashes, struggling to find focus as smoke and shrapnel obscured the room. The skytrooper, unobstructed by such difficulties, strode forward slowly. Its blaster rifle swept back and forth lazily in search of kills. Unable to see more than the gray-plated boots, Kanner fired wildly at an upward angle, hoping in desperation for a hit.

One bolt scattered pointlessly against the heavy armor over the shins, while the second passed completely to the side to slam against one of the cylindrical support struts along the wall.

Kanner's jaw went slack beneath his filtration mask when, rather than dissipate uselessly, the impact pierced the surface of that column. A tiny hole through the alloy burst wide open as a massive surge of white spray detonated outward into the room. Roiling over everything it touched as it boiled away in furious fog, the cloud obscured all.

The Skytrooper stopped in mid-stride, sensors overwhelmed, processors confused. It fired wildly in a pre-programmed scheme to cover itself.

Flush with the floor, Kanner discovered he could still see. Rather than blast at this pointless angle, he took the momentary reprieve offered to extend his right arm, line up the close range shot, and snap his right wrist to the side with his pinky held outward.

Guided by this artificial motile cue, a tiny dart launched from the tube concealed beneath his forearm guard. It slammed into the droid at the knee and the needle-sharp nacelle pierced into the circuitry. A nearly imperceptible wire connected back to the launcher and up the arm to a battery pack between the shoulder blades. That now discharged, pouring energy down to the electrodart and into the Skytrooper.

Overloaded by the sudden surge, the machine thrashed about in place, motors refusing all commands for a handful of critical seconds.

Bolt after bolt hit it from the side. Armor burned, peeled, and gave way until a ruby spear struck through and blew apart the chest cavity.

Arleyk, blood leaking down her face from a cut to the forehead, kept firing until the droid crumbled to pieces.

After it collapsed, Kanner took a moment to catch his breath. A swift check toward the entrance determined that there were no more, so he holstered his pistols and made his way over to Arleyk on unsteady feet. She, rather smeared and dripping a steady rivulet of crimson down her chin, leaned against the battered ring and gulped down air in heaves. "I hate firefights," she groused.

"Could have been worse," they were both standing up afterward. That counted as a win in his estimation. "You okay?" he questioned, genuinely concerned. Between the fog, grit, and smoke it was difficult to tell if any injuries had penetrated her combat suit.

"This," she tapped the mark above her left eye. "Stings like someone dipped my head in molten durasteel," the words came off clipped and hard-edged, laced with lingering pain. "And I think I turned something in my left leg when I fell. It's not bad, but I won't be much use in a footrace for a while. You?"

Kanner winced, both in sympathy and feeling the force of his own hurts emerge from beneath the veil of adrenalin. "Burn-through from a ricochet on my back, but it's not too bad. Other than that I think it's mostly bumps and bruises."

"Then we should patch up, quickly," Arleyk took a moment to glance at the pierced pillar. "In a different room. I'm not sure what that gas was, but I don't want to breathe it."

"Right." Together they shambled two rooms back toward the center. Each step carried a glance back, fear creeping up now, as worry over the approach of further Skytroopers slowly infected their thoughts.

This trepidation paused while administering first aid. The process, as ever, was strangely intimate, a sort of inexplicable breach of barriers despite the lack of even the slightest erotic undertone. Thankfully, neither sported any truly serious injuries. The cut on Arleyk's face sealed easily under kolto spray. It would not even leave the slightest of scars. Kanner's back injury responded well to burn paste and a contact bandage. The rest was nothing that time wouldn't work through.

"It seems," Arleyk began as they worked their armor back into place. "They found us somehow."

"Must have keyed off the datacrons," it seemed the only possible option. Nothing else offered even the slightest chance for tracking. "Three is a basic response squad. When they don't return they'll send a platoon, nine plus a specialist, probably a heavy."

"That is not a fight we can win." The frank assessment lingered on the wreckage of their combat. Dozens of unique artifacts lay upon the floor now, blasted beyond recognition. "We barely managed to beat three of them."

"We could leave," it was the first idea that popped into Kanner's head, the old smuggler standard of cut and run. "Skytrooper response is slow. We can probably make it out of the caves before the follow-up arrives."

The look Arleyk gave him was searing. "If we do that, they'll destroy everything in this vault. The Kame, Kime, and Kume will end up truly extinct."

"I know," the suggestion squirmed through his belly, worming at his conscience. "But what else can we do? _Dustchaser_ can scatter a platoon or two, the shield's take a couple of rockets, but that'll bring them all down on us, and there's no way to stop a company of Skytroopers. Even the Commander couldn't fight that many at once, probably." He was pretty sure that wasn't possible, even for a legend. "We can grab the datacrons, but it would take too long to carry even one carbonite slab fifteen klicks. Ninety-nine is impossible."

The woman's face was iron hard as she digested this, but with a slow swallow she subsumed the impulse to protest and undertook the bitter demands of acceptance. "You are correct, much as it pains me to agree. So," her expression soured further, but her gaze rose to meet his all the same. "We cannot evacuate the vault, nor can we fight off the Skytroopers ourselves. Further, this world is too isolated for us to call for help in time. What options does that leave? Droids walk slowly. It will take hours for them to reach this place. There must be something we can do."

It was a hard question. Fight, run, or bargain, that was the traditional smuggler triad. But they were doomed to lose a fight, running meant countenancing a loss too great to even imagine, and merciless automatons weren't open to negotiation. Thinking back on past desperate encounters, he chanced upon a forth option, one occasionally useful for dealing with sticky situations in deep space. "Maybe we could blow the cavern," he offered, trying to imagine it in his mind. "There's two hundred meters of rock on top of this vault, and the blasted droids haven't drilled through that. I don't think they're programming even lets them conceive of trying. The vault's not going anywhere. If we could barricade the entrance then we can go back to Odessen and come back with a proper gunship, roll this all up."

"A reasonable idea," Arleyk tried to sound supportive, but the tilt of her head indicated an objection soon to follow. "But the geology of the cave system is quite stable. It would take a massive discharge to cause any significant collapse. Nothing we carry is sufficient to the need."

That much was the plain truth. A few grenades and two kilos of industrial demolitions were barely enough to break the vault door, never mind collapse hundreds of tons of rock. "Shame this vault isn't full of power cells," Kanner groused, wallowing for a moment in frustration. "Might've been able to rig some kind of charge if it was."

Blue eyes lit up when he said this. "What about that gas that discharged from the pillar? It has to be volatile. Could we use that?"

"Maybe," it did not seem like much to hope for, but investigating that burst of evaporative fog was better than moping along the floor. "Let's find out what it was."

The answer turned out to be remarkably simple. "Oxygen, just oxygen," Kanner shook his head as he examined the burst piping. "Stored in a stable pressurized vessel to keep it in liquid form without refrigeration."

"Not just oxygen," Arleyk knelt beside him. "The pillar's divided into two halves, the upper one contained oxygen, but the lower one is full of hydrogen. There's only a thin membrane between them, without the oxygen it's already leaking out most of the hydrogen." She paused. "I don't understand. This doesn't provide any additional structural support, and it's highly volatile…"

Oxygen and hydrogen. The primary components of primitive rocket fuels. Nothing used now, of course, but something encountered in the depths of space from time to time. _Fuels..._something clicked into place then. "It's a bomb." Kanner turned suddenly, looking around the room to other supporting pillars. Nothing betrayed them from the surface, but instinct and paranoia made him certain. "They all are. This whole place is rigged to blow."

"Why?" There was no doubt in the voice, belief was evident, only incredulity at the very concept. "Why build a vault that you could destroy utterly?"

"A failsafe, probably." That seemed the most likely reason. "I bet the membrane dissolves if you run a current through it. Wires and a portable power source would be all you need to blow the vault completely."

"Madness." Arleyk shook her head. "They would have rather destroyed themselves than let the Iokathi claim them. I cannot understand that impulse."

"I agree," Kanner thought for a moment. "Blowing the whole vault is just…" He stopped, and started to grin like a demon. "Exactly what we need." He thought for a moment, briefly daring to enjoy the horrified expression on his companion's face. This idea might actually impress her. "I'm going to need you to pry some information from those priestesses, and then model some results. We'll need to hurry too, because if this can work we're about to be very busy."

Chapter Notes

The exact group behavior of Skytroopers isn't exactly clear. I've had to make some guesses as to what their protocols might be. However, the basic 3-unit squad is well established in game.

Oxygen+Hydrogen=Kaboom is just pretty basic chemistry. As gases its not a very powerful discharge, but highly pressurized or compressed into liquid form is a different story.


	7. Chapter 7

Chapter Seven

The simulation program on Arleyk's datapad was university grade, pried out the clutches of some rich Coruscanti professor in return for some long forgotten favor. When combined with the extremely detailed blueprints regarding the vault and its surroundings preserved by the designers, including the failsafe device, they were able to swiftly confirm the seemingly insane scheme. They could, in fact, blow up the vault to save it.

The frozen occupants anyway.

That was something of a point of contention.

"I cannot do this." Arleyk protested when the simulation completed. "You are asking me to destroy the collected cultural legacy of three entire species. It is utterly impossible."

"Just the physical versions," Kanner countered, trying to summon some sort of positive argument. "Everything's imaged and contained on the datacrons." She'd already made certain of that while they ran the model.

It was, he discovered ruefully, the wrong thing to say. "You think that's the same? If I blew up your ship but preserved a picture of it would that be acceptable?" The curator's fury cut deep, and Kanner winced at the implication. His stomach churned at the idea of losing _Dustchaser, _damage he could not name.

But he was not dissuaded. "There isn't anything else!" He shouted back, meeting the blistering crystalline focus of his partner. "Do have any sort of plan that keeps us alive, and those slabs intact, and this vault in one piece? If so I'm all ears, but otherwise this is the only chance we've got to save any of this. If these people live they'll get to make new art someday. I'll trade that for the fate of some cold stones every time."

Arleyk rose to her full height, face twisted with rage, but even as she drew in her diaphragm to scream some furious retort her jaw suddenly shut tight. A moment later air hissed out and her whole frame deflated. "Fine." There were tears on her cheeks then. "You are right, of course. We make hard choices in the face of disaster. Promise me this will work?"

He couldn't meet that pleading expression. Staring at his boots, Kanner could only answer. "I can promise that if it doesn't we won't live long enough for regrets."

A mirthless chuckle echoed through the suddenly silent halls. "That is a fair thing for a smuggler to say." The glamorous words rippled with irony and sorrow. Resolve cemented into place beneath pained witness. "Very well. Consider me committed. What do we do first?"

That, at least, was a question he could answer properly. Doing something, anything, even an overwhelming amount of labor with not nearly enough time available, was better than contemplating destruction. "I need you to run the wiring from each support pillar back to the vault entrance so we can compile a universal fuse. While you do that I'm going to take apart the smashed skytroopers and rig up a repulsor grid from their boosters. Once we have that we can pull and load each of the carbonite slabs and carry them to the safe cavern your program gave us. With the right rig we can do three at a time, which should just get us in under the clock before the platoon gets too close." The last one was nebulous, but Kanner hoped that if they did blow the vault that would distract the droids and maybe cause them to go away.

"You're sure a mere batch of falling rock will destroy a full company of Skytroopers?" This had to be at least the fourth time she'd asked the question. "They can fly after all."

"It's more like they can jump really high." He didn't even have to close his eyes to recall that, the fiery arcs were embedded in his brain, squad after squad blasting over the rise. Swift, deadly, merciless, blaster bolts reflecting off their armor as they descended, smashing through the trees. "And yeah, they could escape, if they were on the surface, but they're at the bottom of a canyon fifteen hundred meters deep plowed out by turbolasers. We blow the vault, it'll trigger a rock fall all along the sides, smash everything in that canyon beneath basalt hail. They try to jump out and gravity does the work on the way back down. It's the only chance we have."

"Fine." The word carried a wage of pain, but there was no deflecting the truth in the end. It was not a good plan, Kanner agreed with that much, but it was a chance, and they were lucky to have that much. If the Commander had been a few minutes slower getting to the Eternal Throne, well, there might not be any vault at all.

A ridiculous thing to contemplate, really, and he worked to banish it quickly. There was too much work to do.

It blurred together swiftly enough, after the first part. Tearing the stabilizer out of the chest of each skytrooper and attaching the four point rockets to the sides with a few quick welds was easy enough. Balancing them together in a linear array was harder. None of the droid parts were long enough, but he managed to a massive topographical sculpture of one of the continents bound within a metal frame. Extracted, that formed usable struts.

Arleyk's injury manifested in a growing limp by the time they started moving the encased survivors, and she fought through it using a combination of painkillers and willpower. It was an impressive display Kanner could not find the courage to properly complement, but the struggle reduced her to monosyllables in a hurry, and they worked in silence thereafter. Three by three they grappled the slabs onto their little floating sled and pushed them out of the vault's many rooms and three hundred meters further into a small side cavern that geology claimed would be stable after the blast. Repetition clouded everything. Step by step, pull and haul, endless obedience to a pattern, out one room cleared after another, back and forth. The world compressed to this single brutal walking battle with the clock. Energy for everything else evaporated.

They dropped the final three slabs and went back for more without realizing they were done.

Arleyk slumped down beside the empty space in the floor. Her leg kept twitching despite obvious exhaustion. "Did we actually finish?"

"Confirmed," the datacrons, now tied to her back, supplied the answer. "All of our people have been evacuated."

It was hard to believe, but those words, still jarring in their translation, managed to shock the body from inertia. "Okay," Kanner's tongue felt leaden in his mouth, but somehow he twisted it about to form words. "No time to waste then." He bent down to offer Arleyk a shoulder for support, though he felt barely able to take a step himself. "Let's blow this thing while we still can."

"Yes, I suppose we must." She let him lift her up, teeth gritted with each step.

As they passed through the vault door Kanner picked up the improvised detonator, a simple electrical switch attached to a vast bundle of almost imperceptibly thing wires. He clipped it to his belt, three hundred meters to go.

They both looked back, silent. It could not be avoided, contemplation of the destruction to come, of everything that they were about to smash to pulp beneath millions of tons of rock. He dared not look at Arleyk then, unwilling to face the horrors he was sure radiated from her face. Instead there was only the bizarre question of why the Kame, Kime, and Kume had planned for this. What terrible fear, what burning desire for final defiance, had it taken to place those potential charges within own final vault?

Their seers had gazed through the Force and looked into the heart of Iokath. This structure of ultimate fatalism was the result.

What had they seen?

It took ten minutes to slog and drag their weary forms through the caves. There, crouched together behind a weathered column millions of years old, Kanner hit the button.

A series of soft discharges pulsed through the air. There was a brief sensation of being lifted as the pressure wave coalesced and slammed out through the breach. Then a singular ringing noise as the mighty vault door slammed through cavern dark and collided with stone walls beyond.

After that a silence of mere seconds stretched to endlessness in the soft leeched world of infrared and flapping fungi.

Then reality cracked.

The ground beneath them, bedrock stretching down many kilometers to the bottom of the ocean and the soft mantle below, shuddered. It shook and bucked and shifted. Earthquake engineered by mortal hands, it did not last long. A few shuddering seconds, no more, but when it was done the cave floor beneath Kanner's hands occupied a different space.

"Thousands of years inviolate, and now, gone in an instant." Arleyk whispered beside him. A terrifying smile wrought its passage across her face. "Ever the legacy of war. I suppose this is my true baptism into the Alliance."

"Maybe," Kanner felt rot on his tongue, a hideous coiling feeling that bored down to something within that could not be faced. "Or maybe this war's thousands of years on. Legacies can wait until we finish it for good."

With effort he managed to stand. Numb hands wrapped about Arleyk's hips and helped lever her slender frame upright. "Come on, let's make it back to the vault. I should be able to call Caytoo through the rubble barrier. Maybe he can blast a hole, let us out the short way."

"That would be nice." This smile managed to reach all the way across her weary face. She shuffled into unsteady motion.

The wide flat room where the amphibian once dwelt and the vault door hung was gone now. Piled boulders, huge jagged things slammed together into a compacted mass instead. Here and there gaps were visible, the strength of stone yet holding against the weight above. Unevenly balanced, there were tiny hints of light from far away.

"It seems it fell more heavily toward the back," Arleyk noted, throat dry but diction still precise. "That matches the planetary rotation pattern. I think we might have only a few dozen meters of rubble directly in front. Can your droid burst us loose?"

"Let's see," Kanner tapped his ear, com channels switched. Privately, he'd be satisfied to know if the trap worked and the Skytroopers were destroyed. "Caytoo, come in. I need you to home in on my location and conduct a flyby."

Over the next few minutes tired eyes were forced to focus on letters spooling across a tiny screen as Caytoo spun through a series of updates one set of beeps at a time. Aggravating as this was, the very first update was enough to launch a whoop of joy from the pair at the bottom of the cave. "It worked! It worked! We got them. The crevice is clear of droids."

He threw his arms around Arleyk in a wild embrace, one returned by her gloved limbs. They clung together for a time, until his gaze drifted to her face and he saw that, despite a coating of grim and grit, and lined by exhaustion, she was still stunningly beautiful. Reddened with embarrassment, he pulled back slowly.

Further updates covered any awkwardness. "Ground scan shows only forty-two meters of rubble between us and open air. Caytoo thinks he can blast through, but it's going to get messy and hot. We need to back up a ways."

"Right."

They sheltered among their carbonite cargo. Stacked together as they now were it formed an eerie mausoleum in the depths. Faces peered out in partial form from the cloak of gray, haunted by the in-between. Kanner avoided looking at them, staring through the darkness at Arleyk instead. As the distant rumble of _Dustchaser_'s guns sent a low vibration through the floor, in the slow and steady pulse of demolition deployment he marveled at how, despite the many layers of dust and grime clinging to her now – acquired despite the best efforts of high end polymers to stay clean no matter what – something about his companion stood out above her surroundings. For all that she'd handled herself with aplomb throughout the journey she still looked like something summoned from a wholly different version of the galaxy. Not someone meant for this crawling and scrambling life. She belonged in elegantly outfitted halls where people spoke in soft tones and used overly lengthy words. Those three priestesses immortalized within the datacrons, she would have fit in perfectly among them.

He did not understand why she was here and not in some salon on Coruscant, drinking colorless liqueur from crystalline goblets alongside celebrities and Senators. It would not do to ask, but Kanner wished he knew. He found in that dark moment a passion to crack the mystery behind Arleyk Smaugan, and not simply in an effort to reach beneath her clothes. The puzzle drew him almost as much as Iokath itself.

In time the rumble stopped, and Caytoo signaled over the com. "We're in the clear, a pretty even ramp cut through the rumble, and wide enough that we'll be able to bring up these," Kanner tapped the nearest of the blocks. "Without difficulty. Need to wait a little longer though, this rock heats up a lot before it breaks. Still too hot for now."

"I do not mind a break," Arleyk sighed lightly. She massaged her left leg gently. No complaints were voiced, but the injury clearly still pained her.

Kanner understood, he was not without aches of his own, and his muscles were beginning to stiffen from the demands of their exertions. He intended to spend almost the entirety of the return trip sleeping. "Well, after this no one can say you haven't seen field work. Heck you've even got confirmed kills on the ledger." He briefly pulled down the filtration mask and offered his best wicked smile. "That means both Hylo's lads and Aygo's boys owe you drinks in the cantina on the way back."

This earned an arched smile in returned. "Is that so?" She briefly reached back and pulled the datacrons out from the secure sling she'd rigged to her shoulder pack. "These ladies here will earn us the same from Sana-Rae's mystics, and the distributed power system used to hide their function ought to count for Oggurobb's minions."

"We made the quartet huh?" Kanner's smile broadened to reach all the way across his face. "That's rare, first time for me. Guess it's a good omen for this partnership."

He'd meant it as a joke. When Arleyk's expression brightened in turn and she answered, "It would seem so," he felt his heart skip a beat.

In the next moment a metallic ringing shattered the brief peace.

"Skytroopers!" They sprang upright together.

"The detached platoon must have already been in the tunnels," Kanner hissed. Instinctively his hands went for his pistols. He wrenched them back a moment later, recognizing the futility.

"We can't fight, we have to lure them back to the ship," Arleyk lurched into motion without this error. "We can't let them ignite the carbonite."

"Osik," Kanner didn't speak Mando, but their curses got around. "This is going to hurt." He knew Arleyk was right, but charging over stone still hot enough to cook a thick nerf steak on was painful just in the anticipation.

They ran anyway.

Caytoo had bored out a tunnel fit for a droid. Arrow straight, with a level eight degree slope, cut in an almost a perfect circle, it displayed no visible deviations.

"It looks like a lava tube," Arleyk muttered. Grimly, she added. "About five minutes after the lava passed through."

The clatter of skytroopers grew louder behind them. The machines had detected motion and increased their pace.

"Boots soles are the most insulated point in any outfit," Kanner spoke words into empty air, trying to steel his nerves. "Don't stop, don't fall, don't touch the walls. You go first, I'll cover you."

"Understood." She reached into her belt and passed over a small globe. "Flashbang. Drop it when you start, might block their targeting. Give me a five second lead, that way if I do fall it doesn't take both of us."

He nodded grimly and wrapped quivering fingers about the little orb. Nervous motion clicked the priming switch into place.

Arleyk stumbled into a lurching, bobbling run as she fought to retain her balance and still move as fast as possible through the heat-slicked tunnel.

At the count of five Kanner saw the first chromed-silver skull come around the final bend.

He turned and threw the flashbang over his shoulder. "Run! Run! They're here!"

Ahead of him Arleyk quickened her pace to a reckless degree, stumbling and weaving from side to side as her left leg moved closer and closer to collapse with every step.

Three-quarters of the way up, with the blue of the distant sky blessedly occupying more of the field of view with every step, the first shot was fired.

Thermal flux distorted aim and it struck far too low, but others followed thereafter.

Doom rang in Kanner's ears. The tunnel was completely open, utterly devoid of cover. It would channel shots into them even on misses. They had seconds to live and too many strides yet.

"Empire take it!" He spun in place, right arm extending out with the motion. The range was extreme, but the lack of obstacles worked both ways, and he had gravity on his side. He flicked his fingers to the side.

The lead skytrooper was one of the heavies. Extra armor plating, flared shoulder rockets, and a single burning orange visor instead of eyes for optics, enclosed a machine of destruction armed with mortars in addition to its rifle. The little electrodart clipped in at the neck. Charged lanced down the path and set it to twitching futility for four critical seconds.

Arleyk stumbled free on count three, pitched forward onto the rubble as her balance gave out. She rolled and tumbled to wind up splayed against a massive rhomboid rock formation, chest heaving.

It took Kanner four and a half seconds. His exit included a blaster bolt rider. It punched through the back collar of his duster and clipped the cowl over his right ear. A brilliant line of burning agony sent him crashing down to the ground, wind knocked out as he wrapped his stomach around a hip-high mass of rock.

The graze did no serious damage.

_Dustchaser_'s ventral mounted laser cannons did considerably more when Caytoo opened up a half-second later.

The astromech was not rated for combat maneuvers, and his control override was barely able to track a moving target at all. Normally the troopers would have run circles around the ship while he futilely struggled to lock even one down, but at the bottom of a straight tube no evasion was possible and no aiming was necessary. Furiously protective, the little droid just repeated the trigger command over and over.

Of all the explosions that had wracked Sojietra this day, the last belonged to the forgotten war machines of Zakuul.

Chapter Notes

Even handheld blasters can break through fairly significant amounts of rock (principle evidence being Ewoks: Caravan of Courage, hilariously), so I feel fairly safe in having ship-based laser cannons do rather more significant damage.

Close air support is a thing in SWTOR, though it's not uncommon. The Jindo Krey fight is a good example.


	8. Chapter 8

**Chapter Eight**

Kanner tightened the final strap into place with relish. "Ninety-nine." He muttered, feeling a bit smug. "Knew I could fit them all."

It had not been easy, the cargo hold was full to the brim with carefully stacked carbonite forms, and they marched down each hallway on both sides. Going to the refresher now meant a frozen Kime woman stared at you from the far wall, which he continued to try to avoid thinking about. If they needed to use the dorsal hatch for any reason it would require climbing over the pair of young Kume men he strapped to the ladder. Caytoo was essentially trapped in engineering and kept complaining about load-weights.

He found Arleyk sitting in her adopted position as sensors officer when he squeezed his way back up to the cockpit. "We're fully loaded," the announcement could hardly have been any surprise. "All cargo secured." He tossed her an expectant look. "How's the pre-flight checklist. I want to get out of here before we trigger any more surprises."

"We're all clear, ready to launch at any time." Though the response was affirmative, it was not spoken with any enthusiasm. This troubled the captain, especially given how clearly those blue eyes had recognized the trust it took to let someone else run through the checklist, even with Caytoo to double-check everything. It gnawed at him, some unfinished business, unplaced in thoughts still sorting from the chaos of days in the dark.

He refused to deal with it now, all focus devoted to getting his ship safely on the way back to Odessen. They launched without difficulty, though the stabilizers protested during the climb and he had to ease down the inertial dampening to compensate for the heavy load, which left them both compressed into their seats for several minutes. Soon enough stars became starlines became endless blur swirls and the safety of hyperspace enveloped them.

Arleyk got up and left almost immediately thereafter. This oddity did not go unremarked, there was nowhere else to go, so it seemed strange. For a while Kanner did nothing. He checked over idle shipboard material and considered whether or not he had enough tools aboard to repair the damage to his armor before he got back. Only when the boredom of empty blue nothing overcame this fiddling did he drift back to the little cabin space.

He found his blond associate seated on the edge of her bunk. She had the three datacrons on the floor before her, assembled but deactivated, their emanations silent for now. Aquamarine eyes crawled back and forth across the wall, seeing nothing.

She heard his approach, of course, in hyperspace there was nothing but the steady, barely audible thrum of the engine to hear, and footfalls resounded well above that. As he stepped through the door she spoke up without bothering to turn and look. "There were ninety-nine thousand, nine hundred and ninety-nine artifacts in the vault." A finger flickered toward the silent datacron. "All destroyed now, or lost under hundreds of tons of rocks." She turned her neck to face Kanner then, expression taught. Pressure radiated through every motion and word. "We spoke earlier, about earning drinks for this victory, but it doesn't feel right. If this is victory, I should not want more of it."

"Okay." Looking at her, that lovely face distorted by a furious conflagration of warring impulses, Kanner's first wish was to have someone else standing in his place. That impulse passed quickly, and he found in him the desire, the need, to handle it himself. They were partners now, and not simply because Hylo Visz had said so. The aliens and their conveniently absurd number of destroyed artworks and frozen survivors had done that.

He sat down next to her. After a moment's hesitancy, he put out his left arm and wrapped it around her shoulders. Arleyk shuddered once in surprise, but raised no protest. Soon enough she leaned over, weight shared between them. "Alcohol's a marvelous thing, sometimes." Kanner struggled to find a path to the words he felt would serve, somewhere on the opposite side of a ghost-haunted fog. "Helps you remember and helps you forget at the same time. Frames some emotions, shrouds the rest."

Slowly, he pulled in a deep breath. "There's always rounds after victories, because there's always something you'd want to forget."

"How do you know this?" Blue eyes carried no doubt, only a frightfully intense curiosity. "You're no more a soldier than I am."

"We're both Alliance members," the counter was obvious. "That's close enough." Driven by his own need to know, he probed a little ways into that cerulean mask. "Where were you stationed during the Assault?" There was no need to name the world, they both knew what that word meant.

"In the base," no hesitation to that answer, nor any shame. "I was on targeting support for the main anti-air emplacements."

An important mission that, and certainly one that could be answered with pride, but it was as Kanner suspected. She hadn't seen the battlefield in person. No doubt she'd been in various nasty scrapes in the past, she was too handy with a blast not to have, but a battlefield was a different beast from a bar brawl, a double-cross, or even a heist. "I was outside," he began slowly, the words emerged fitfully, straining to take form around his suddenly thick tongue. "Procurement background means I've got munitions experience, so I got lumped in with a bunch of other guys to provide ammunition and supply support to Aygo's troops. We were all logistics types, dockworkers, salvagers, smugglers, and all that kind. I got teamed up with a bunch of fellows I knew from years back, under a retired Republic Sergeant I'd met on Yavin."

He sighed, a long exhalation to release the pressure of the building pain, ease the ghosts off his back. The expression on Arleyk's face, clear concern and conscious consideration, helped. "We weren't supposed to see fire, our post was well behind any of the defensive lines. The Admiral's a decent commander that way, he wasn't going to put anything but real soldiers in harm's way if he could help it, but war doesn't play by anybody's rules. You can probably guess what happened next."

"Yes," agreement came readily. "But I would like you to finish."

"Right," he knew she would say that. The words came easier now. He could see it as he spoke, the events replayed behind his eyes. "Vaylin's reinforcements assaulted Aygo's flank and punched through. Huge chunks of the defensive line were overrun. Orders came to fall back, but before we could move the skytroopers came over the cliffs." Fire blossomed inside the panorama beneath his eyelids. Blaster fire rained down in all directions. "We fought back, but they had the numbers. The sergeant lured the main force in, set off the munitions and blew himself and most of the chrome-buckets to bits. That gave us the space to retreat, the handful who were left."

"Not long after that, the Commander beat Vaylin. Victory secured." He swallowed hard, drinking down the lingering bitterness. "But I was one of only two in my group who came through." Looking at Arleyk, he forced the pain from his face, one muscle at a time. "No victories come without loss. Not in war, and not in business either. I met plenty of prospectors during five years running around the edge of known space. So many dreamed of the perfect big score, but it never actually happened. There's only earning more than expenses."

With a careful bend of his right arm, not wanting to let go on the opposite end, Kanner scooped up the datacrons. "Kame, Kime, and Kume right?" The names sounded funny when strung together. "Three whole species, thought lost to the galaxy, and we get to bring them back, along with all the knowledge they sought to preserve. Yeah, it still hurts to lose the artifacts, but it still counts as a win, we just have to endure, and try to win bigger the next time."

The lady beside him said nothing for a long time, she just leaned against him, warm and steady. At length, she spoke without the slightest hint of sadness. "The record says Iokath conducted tests against seventy-six civilizations. That's quite a few next times. Are you still up for this?"

"Absolutely."

Hylo Visz met them on the landing pad when they returned, per Arleyk's personal request. That was as high in the command chain as either of them dared to go. Kanner had spoken to the Commander, once, in early days. He recalled the experience in the same way he recalled the time he'd come out of hyperspace orbiting a black hole, memorable, but not something he was eager to repeat.

"Coming in a little hot captain," Hylo noted with her characteristically arched expression. She could detect _Dustchaser_'s overloaded status from just one look. "You find something for us on your little scavenger hunt?"

"Oh, just a little something," he deadpanned. "The last survivors of an extinct civilization. Three of them, actually."

Far too seasoned to let any shock show on her face, Hylo merely smirked a little. "You're kidding right?"

"Not in the least," Arleyk, as they'd pre-arranged, came down the gangway with the datacron in her hands. A flick of her finger and the image rose to life, the three priestesses spinning about into formal presentation. "Currently, they're still frozen in carbonite. We'll need to find a suitable place to thaw them out."

The legendary smuggler looked at the flowing imagery and snapped her fingers. "Clearly, this is going to be one hell of an after-action report. Hurry on in. I'll call Sana-Rae."

As they walked back into Alliance Headquarters, Kanner and Arleyk shared mutual smiles. He struggled to avoid giggling. Even as his mind considered the considerable work that remained, he discovered he was already looking forward to the next mission.

Chapter Notes

In the fictional backstories I've created for the leads, Kanner joined the Alliance in the very first wave of volunteers after the Battle of Asylum. Arleyk wouldn't join until later, after Chapter XIII: Profit and Plunder, when Hylo Visz reached out to people who could actually sell off all the loot they took from the vault. It would be unlikely, given how small the Alliance was when he joined up, for Kanner to have never spoken to the Outlander, but generally they don't move in the same levels of operations.


End file.
